Originally Posted by
yoganmahew
And this is the problem.
IT does fly planes (try flying one without a flight plan), serve passengers (booking and check-in, APIS, seat assignment), load baggage (load sheets - guess which bit of BA broke in the latest failure).
Check-in staff that can efficiently load a plane, ground staff that can safely load it, are an asset without intangibles like goodwill. Customer satisfaction with the travelling experience is related almost entirely to the staff they encounter.
I put it to you that an airline's staff are more important than planes, in this day of aircraft leasing, same with buildings, same with any piece of physical infrastructure; the only differentiator between one airline and another is the people who operate that airline.
I agree.
Having a reliable IT infrastructure is probably more important in some ways than having aeroplanes, strange though it may seem. If you have problems with aeroplanes, you can transfer to other flights, codeshare, wet/dry lease, cancel and rebook, etc. If you have a complete IT failure, you don’t even know who your passengers are!
“Going manual” is not a viable option these days due to complexity and de-skilling.