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Delta Computer Glitches Force Flight Halts Third Year In a Row (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the unwelcome-annual-affairs dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The U.S. airline grounded all domestic flights Tuesday to deal with a technology issue that affected some of its systems. About an hour later, Delta said it had restored all its systems, allowing the services to resume. While the carrier said there were no disruptions or safety issues with any flight, the systems failure was the third in as many years that forced Delta to shut its operations. In January last year, a 2 1/2-hour computer breakdown grounded domestic flights. Delta's worldwide computer systems failed in August 2016, causing massive cancellations. This time, international flights weren't affected, and the grounding was relatively short. Still, with limited updates on flight schedules, irate customers took to social media.

69 comments

  1. Delta goes up up in the air by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    just like DIS DIC

  2. And I'm sure their CEO will get a massive raise by Indy1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    while cutting infrastructure spending and outsourcing IT positions in a mad attempt to make his/her stock options go through the roof.

    Rinse, Lather, Repeat

    --
    Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
    1. Re:And I'm sure their CEO will get a massive raise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This kind of comment needs to be downvoted.
      It is speculative without substance, and does not add to the discussion.

  3. Re: And I'm sure their CEO will get a massive rais by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Honestly, it was probably idiot COBOL old white fucks that spend more time drinking coffee and walking around than doing anything that fucked this up. Not that I know or anything.

  4. REPUBLICANS HAVE LEGITIMIZED RAPE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    It's almost time to show Trump what that advocacy buys him IN FEDERAL PRISON! Don Junior is going to get the full Kavanaugh treatment, unfortunately without the dulling comfort of booze. Pucker up, Republican rapists! GET READY!

    1. Re: REPUBLICANS HAVE LEGITIMIZED RAPE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well. This is an odd audience choice for this post.

      Is Delta more prevalent with Republicans or has everyone already kicked your blustering ass off all the roofs in your neighborhood?

    2. Re: REPUBLICANS HAVE LEGITIMIZED RAPE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Delta is coming to Republicans in November, that's for sure. Mueller is going to really drive the point home when Trump gets carted off to Federal prison to die there, a traitor. Kavanaugh might end up there too, who knows.

      Say hi to Bill Cosby, rapist scumbag Republicans! And prepare your anuses!

    3. Re: REPUBLICANS HAVE LEGITIMIZED RAPE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ALL "date rape" is FAKE rape.

    4. Re: REPUBLICANS HAVE LEGITIMIZED RAPE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ok, your first trolling sentence was actually kinda funny. Maybe the left does have people with a tiny bit of a sense of humor.

      No sense of reality, but hey, it's a start.

    5. Re: REPUBLICANS HAVE LEGITIMIZED RAPE! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ironic that the punishment for rape is exposure to an environment where rape is allowed and expected. Is your goal retribution or rehabilitation? Where is your line of morality?

  5. Re: And I'm sure their CEO will get a massive rais by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    $10 says it was some guy on his curry break.

  6. Result of third world labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is what happens when you have an H1B visa system that allows companies to import cheap, foreign labor with faked credentials rather than hire american programmers. Then you have SJWs loving to hate america because they cannot find work because H1B immigrants steal the jobs and then they go out on the street and becoming destructive miscreants demanding even more foreign aliens to come in and steal the jobs, and then they blame social injustice and the "evil america" for not hving jobs!. And you have a certain political party that benefits from keeping americans on welfare by helping foreign aliens steal their jobs so they can create dependable welfare dole votes. Why the american people do not demand an end to all immigration is beyond me and why they demand more socialism instead of just demanding the theft of their jobs by immigrants by ending immigration. If everyone called their reps and demanded all immigration would be stopped, it actually would happen.

    1. Re: Result of third world labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because people are fucking retarded. If they weren't, socialist/communists would never get into power. But like a moth to a flame...

    2. Re: Result of third world labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I fuckin called and the Congress staffer didn't even know what the h1b program was. It's almost like something has to catch fire for people to pay attention

    3. Re:Result of third world labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      Right. Do you know why Microsoft, Google, Intel, NVidia, AMD, Qualcomm, Facebook, Apple etc. are fighting like crazy over H1B quotas? Because your mythical American programmers can't do the work.

      Your society, youth culture, and educational failures are churning out lopheaded idiots, and your tech sector can no longer stand on its own legs, and have to be carried on the shoulders of highly skilled and educated Europeans, South Americans and Asians. And this is not entirely new... it's been going on for a couple of decades.

    4. Re:Result of third world labor by dwywit · · Score: 2

      Jeez, I'm gonna have to start browsing at +2, if posts like this keep getting +1.

      Hint: follow the money. It's *always* about the money.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    5. Re: Result of third world labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hahahahahahahahahahahaha! Good one, Lars! Europa uber alles! Death to the American working class! Long live the financial oligarchy!

    6. Re:Result of third world labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can stick your fingers in your ears all you want, but it doesn't make it any less true. You USED to be a smart country with excellent education, but your culture is dragging you and your whole society down. Partying and celebrity gossip is more important than education these days it seems.

    7. Re: Result of third world labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? What, exactly, have your third worlders invented lately? They excel at copying, but what have they invented? The only thing that comes out of the third world is failure and poverty.

      The only countries on par with the US in actually doing useful things are Japan and South Korea, and THEY are smart enough to keep their immigration rates low to non-existent. Nobody's perfect, but at least throngs of people turning their beautiful cities into shitholes while driving down wages isn't among their problems.

    8. Re: Result of third world labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not Lars, and I'm pretty sure your employer (or your owner) doesn't want you snagging posters' IP to geoloc them while posting like that.

    9. Re:Result of third world labor by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      You USED to be a smart country with excellent education, but your culture is dragging you and your whole society down.

      Thanks for proving that there's no shortage of ignorance available. Our education system was deliberately compromised by politicians who got elected due to gerrymandering, on behalf of ultra-wealthy owners of corporations who wanted to preserve their dominance over others. It has absolutely fuck-all to do with culture and everything to do with greed.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    10. Re: Result of third world labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and now the youth are indoctrinated with sjw thoughts and kept in line by sjw police. tech performance will naturally go up if we kumbaya everything

    11. Re: Result of third world labor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you been reading scientific papers from around the world lately? Perhaps you've had a look at those papers coming out of your American universities and institutes at least? You may notice that overwhelmingly, the authors are foreign, in particular from Asian countries.

      Yes, innovation and scientific work done while resident in America as guest researchers and lecturers, but no, not by Americans. Those papers are your answer to what "third worlders" have been inventing lately.

  7. buy ^^^ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    all while IBM stock is up...
    something is wrong with everything

  8. WHINY NAZI WHINES ABOUT BEING UNEMPLOYABLE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And, shocker, it's everyone else's fault! I knew it.

    1. Re: WHINY NAZI WHINES ABOUT BEING UNEMPLOYABLE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All displaced indigenous workers are NAZIS!!

    2. Re: WHINY NAZI WHINES ABOUT BEING UNEMPLOYABLE by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

      YEA!! Let's all get indigenous!!

  9. Re: And I'm sure their CEO will get a massive rai by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well all we know is you are a racist fuck. But please continue so we can mark you for retirement.

  10. Still not surprised, but a little confused by imidan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not surprised, although I keep thinking that the massive amounts of money Delta loses due to IT failures would be enough incentive to bring their IT infrastructure back under their control. Since 2016, Delta's CIO, Rahul Samant, has been working to move IT employees out of Delta into Indian IT consultancies (see http://www.fox9.com/news/delta...).

    It seems to me that airlines basically have four things of real value: aircraft, ground crews to maintain the aircraft, flight crews to operate the aircraft, and an IT system that allows them to schedule and dispatch the aircraft. When an airline talks about its "core competencies," I feel like their IT system should definitely be one, because if it fails, the planes don't fly. That seems like enough reason to not offshore that part of the business.

    1. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by Cochonou · · Score: 1

      Does a one hour general grounding cost so much ? In terms of image for sure, but in terms of money I am not so sure... Who is actually going to get a refund for this ? One to two hours delays are not rare.

    2. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by mhotchin · · Score: 4, Informative

      Knock on effects. Oops, missed your connecting flight. Oops, flight crew is now over hours, have to get another one. Oops, flight didn't make it, so the flight out of the destination is hooped as well.

    3. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Delta's CIO, Rahul Samant, has been working to move IT employees out of Delta into Indian IT consultancies"

      Oh surprise, surprise, surprise - yet another Indian IT boss who refuses to hire anyone who is not Indian. I guess blatant employment discrimination is a-okay just so long as it's the majority population that's getting shafted.

    4. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, yeah. But in the big scheme of things, how much do you think it actually lost them? My guess is that it won't be but a fraction of a percentage in their quarterly report.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    5. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by DarkOx · · Score: 2

      Don't forget if any busier airports are involved and you miss your window the ATC delay. Detla plays A LOT of games to make their ontime and cancellation numbers look a lot better than they are too. I have laterally had a 4pm flight be delayed for 8 hours while later flights to the same destination took off because it was better to screw the ~150 of us for the better part of a whole day to keep their later flights from figuring negatively into their ontime states.

      Usually this does not happen because its the same plane being turned around and used for the later flights; but when its not watch out.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    6. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends. Some airports require a quota of flights or you lose your right to fly out of them. If they were low on their quota at Heathrow, you could lose your right to fly all planes in or out for some time. That could basically cut them off entirely from certain cities and require refunds for all passengers that use that airport.

      https://jalopnik.com/londons-heathrow-airport-sometimes-hosts-ghost-flights-1827724434

    7. Re:Still not surprised, but a little confused by bobbied · · Score: 2

      I'm not surprised, although I keep thinking that the massive amounts of money Delta loses due to IT failures would be enough incentive to bring their IT infrastructure back under their control. Since 2016, Delta's CIO, Rahul Samant, has been working to move IT employees out of Delta into Indian IT consultancies (see http://www.fox9.com/news/delta...).

      It seems to me that airlines basically have four things of real value: aircraft, ground crews to maintain the aircraft, flight crews to operate the aircraft, and an IT system that allows them to schedule and dispatch the aircraft. When an airline talks about its "core competencies," I feel like their IT system should definitely be one, because if it fails, the planes don't fly. That seems like enough reason to not offshore that part of the business.

      How cute that you think airlines actually OWN the airplanes they fly or actually have the necessary people to fully maintain them. Many aircraft are leased and most of the maintenance work is done by contractors and many times on foreign soil. Also, the airline business is one of managing debt and cash flow, often it's a race to cut costs faster than your competition to keep fares low and profit margins up.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    8. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, yeah. But in the big scheme of things, how much did they "save" by outsourcing IT?

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    9. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, airlines have to pay penalties to Airport Authorities if they are late getting to their gate (and if it's not the fault of the Airport).

    10. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      A shitton more than this will cost them, and there's no assurance that not outsourcing IT would have avoided this outage. Did you have a point, or just upset about outsourcing...that I get, but this outage is no big deal.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    11. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by commodore64_love · · Score: 2

      In the 2017 software crash they had to cancel 150 flights. Figure $200 per set, that's 4.3 million dollars (gross loss). In 2016 they canceled over 1000 flights, so that's 28.8 million (gross).

      - Since the planes didn't fly the actual loss is less (no fuel burned, no hours paid to stewards/pilots, etc).

      Outsourcing to India reduces salary cost from $113,000 to $9000 per engineer. I don't know how many engineers Delta IT uses? 1000 maybe?

      DELTA SAVES $104 million in labor costs.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    12. Re:Still not surprised, but a little confused by imidan · · Score: 1

      How cute that you think airlines actually OWN the airplanes

      Condescending tone aside, it's not that important what the financing mechanism is for the aircraft. Airlines have a lot of money tied up in inventory. Maybe most maintenance is done by foreign contractors, but it's also done following recommendations by the manufacturer and regulations by the FAA. Plus, it's real bad business when a passenger airplane falls out of the sky because the operator cheaped out on maintenance. Given the rarity of plane crashes due to poor maintenance (Wikipedia lists 8 or so in the US since the FAA has existed), it seems that the airlines are doing okay there.

      the airline business is one of managing debt and cash flow

      And my point is, while your planes are all grounded because you offshored a mission-critical part of your enterprise to a bunch of guys who are just about half-competent and have just about half a shit to give about your business, your cash flow is all going one way. In 2016, Delta IT systems had a 5 hour outage that cost $155 million. They've had fleet-grounding IT failures every year since then. As their infrastructure continues to decay under outsourcing, I don't see these outages getting shorter or less frequent.

    13. Re: Still not surprised, but a little confused by imidan · · Score: 1

      Delta reported to investors that their 5-hour outage in 2016 cost $150 million. Whatever the numbers are, I guess they believe they save money pay not having in-house IT. It seems risky, though, if 5 hours costs you that much. What happens when your offshored contractors cause a 10 hour outage? I doubt that the cost of the outage scales linearly with time... I'd guess it goes up faster than that.

    14. Re:Still not surprised, but a little confused by bobbied · · Score: 1

      And my point is you don't have much idea what the issues are when running an airline.

      It's about strictly managing costs per passenger mile and cash flow because such businesses are heavily leveraged and have huge amounts of money flowing around, with very little of it actually profit. Where I'm sure they don't like the fact that their IT systems went down and I'm confident they are in the process of showing who ever ends up being found "responsible" the door, the sad truth here is that such cost cutting is absolutely necessary. And YES if they can eek out a few pennies per passenger by offshoring their IT department, you can bet they will do it.

      As you correctly point out, they MUST maintain the aircraft pre FAA standards, and they simply cannot skimp on the mandated airworthiness of the aircraft they use, they also must comply with Crew training and qualification regulations or get fined in a big way. Airlines though MUST control costs any and every way they possibly can, which is why many contract out anything more than line maintenance and "A" checks. And if they are willing to have their aircraft inspected by some foreign country, you can bet they'd jump at offshoring IT services.

      After all, the successful airlines have been in the business of cutting labor and services costs to the bone for decades. Why would you think IT isn't or shouldn't be on that list? Mission critical is kind of a funny thing, and if they've already saved more than the two hour delay cost them (which in the grand scheme of things wasn't all that much considering they suffer such delays for weather issues at their primary hubs all the time) those IT service outages don't look so bad to management.

      "Yes, sir, that outage was bad and cost us $10 million, but we've saved $500 million in costs the last fiscal year alone doing this." (assuming one had the documentation to prove this) would be a trade ANY airline executive would take.

      Not saying that happened, but it's clearly the trade off being made here. If they are making more money with the trade, that's a good thing.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    15. Re:Still not surprised, but a little confused by imidan · · Score: 1

      I mean, as long as it's cheaper to suffer IT outages than it is to fund IT, clearly they'll keep offshoring. It doesn't look like a sustainable model to me. I understand they're going to do the more profitable thing, but when this tech debt catches up to them in the form of a catastrophic outage, will they be able to withstand the fallout? I'm sure they have risk management people who model this out and say the answer is yes, but those guys aren't infallible.

    16. Re:Still not surprised, but a little confused by bobbied · · Score: 1

      It's how the MBA's make the world go round, rob Peter to pay Paul if you have to, but keep the stock price up... It's manage to quarter and bail out of a company just before Peter runs out of money.

      Airlines have done that for as long as I can remember and I grew up with two parents who worked for a major carrier all their lives.

      So, you may be right, but pushing IT services off shore is the least of their concerns and I'm sure they have performance and availability clauses in their IT supplier contracts. There are just some things you simply cannot offshore as an airline and they have run out of cost reduction options for many years. Now days, airline management is watching load factors, dispatch percentages of their equipment, and are gladly spending billions on aircraft to get 20% reductions in per passenger mile fuel costs. Profit margins are razor thin and ticket prices are hotly contested. So it may be worth it, at least in the short term to do all sorts of things that don't look good long term.

      --
      "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  11. Re: And I'm sure their CEO will get a massive ra by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sorry you derailed the microcode sprint because your Unisys buddy wanted to do nothing but exercise his expense account.

  12. Delta is just another company on this line of fail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Tell it to the credit agencies, tell it to banks, tell it to hotels, tell it to telcos, Apple/MS/Adobe/Cisco/etc. It's RARE to have a company do this stuff well, airlines are absolutely bled to death already. Delta is no Virgin or Lufthansa.

  13. Are they using too many 'goto'? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When I first learned BASIC I was told that 'goto' is bad.

    Somehow Delta Airline doesn't know that, it seems ...

  14. Face Recog poops the bed by bmimatt · · Score: 1

    Great! Let them bring in face recognition dependency into the mix and they're sure to prop up competition stock.

    https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/05/19/208223/delta-airlines-tests-facial-recognition-to-speed-up-baggage-check-in

  15. Are they blaming the Russians and Iranians yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    or whoever is going to take the blame this time? You know how it is with passive, idle, and paranoid minds... someone is always out to get them, they seem to think.

  16. Joe vs. the Volcano by mentil · · Score: 4, Funny

    They neglected the annual human sacrifice to the AS/400 gods.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Joe vs. the Volcano by dwywit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Is that what they use? "Annual human sacrifice" AKA maintenance contract.

      IME AS/400s sit in the corner working and getting dustier and dustier until management decide to stop paying annual maintenance.

      "Geez, why are we paying this much every year? Damn things never go down, we can skip it this year"

      And BINGO! HDD failure - which,as an ad-hoc service call, will cost ~{annual maintenance$$$} to fix.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    2. Re:Joe vs. the Volcano by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Scary as it sounds, that's exactly what happens.

  17. Fly American by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    You have the choice of being punched in the face and having your guitar broken, or not getting off the ground in the first place.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    1. Re:Fly American by NormalVisual · · Score: 1

      Don't forget, having the police show up to drag you off the plane is an extra-cost service that's also available.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
  18. Yearly IT room cleaning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What, is the cleaning person unplugging their mainframe every yearly IT room cleaning to connect the vacuum?

    1. Re:Yearly IT room cleaning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      upvote. These are the clever comments that keep slashdot readers coming back year after year

    2. Re: Yearly IT room cleaning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      maybe some hotshot indian programmer was trying to shoehorn in the latest systemd upgrade

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  20. Also, by ReneR · · Score: 1

    maybe do not base your business on Windows?

    1. Re:Also, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stupid fucking Russian troll. The OS is irrelevant. This is what happens when IT is farmed out on the cheap.

  21. Re:Delta is just another company on this line of f by omnichad · · Score: 2

    And if you're already going to do a bad job, outsourcing starts to make sense. No realisation that it might have value to do a good job.

  22. Yawn by dcw3 · · Score: 1

    Really? A whole hour? So 1/8760th? Well, there goes their five nines.

    --
    Just another day in Paradise
    1. Re:Yawn by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

      Erm, none - granted it could have been written better, but maybe you just suck at English.

      --
      There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
    2. Re:Yawn by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

      Sorry, replied to the wrong post, please ignore.

      --
      There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
  23. English. What a shit language... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How many times did you have to backtrack, when reading the title in this shitty "drowned in ambiguity" excuse of a language?

    1. Re:English. What a shit language... by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

      Erm, none - granted it could have been written better, but perhaps the problem is that you suck at English?

      --
      There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
  24. Headlines, again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Delta Computer Glitches Force Flight Halts Third Year In a Row"

    Seriously, capitalizing every single word in a title sucks. It's confusing. There's no way to know which of "Glitches", "Force" or "Halts" is the verb unless you already know what the headline is about. Why do you keep on doing it?

  25. Re: And I'm sure their CEO will get a massive r by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    clickety clack goes the univac