BA delays at LHR - Computer issue

[Basil]

Originally Posted by slingsby

So, the original art of manual loadsheets, manual check-in, cabin crew actually physically counting SLF on board has died.

I do recall, not so many moons ago, actually practicing this exact scenario, not for BA fortunately, but another EGLL carrier. Yes, minor delays, some inconvenience but an effective proof the pencil and paper still has a very prominent place in today's modern technological era.

Me, always one never to rely solely on IT, especially outsourced and someone who I cant shout at if it goes wrong.....

Yes, that occurred to me. Five years after leaving BA, I worked for an ad hoc charter company. I wrote an Excel spreadsheet to do our loadsheet. It was not certificated so, of course, a written loadsheet had to be completed before departure but it sure helped at the late planning stage.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Originally Posted by BigFrank

Well you are clear in your mind that "extraordinary circumstances" do not obtain.

BA have admitted this - they've said it was a power fault, which is a bog standard contingency that one takes steps to mitigate.


If they're going to do a U-turn and claim "extraordinary circumstances" they'll first have to admit that the boss was lying when he said it was a power fault.

[etudiant]

BEagle,
Where money is involved, I'd not count on the CAA.
What the CAA 'fully expects' is unlikely to be what BA eventually delivers. This toothless bureaucracy is just outgunned by the carriers it purportedly monitors.

[Ian W]

Originally Posted by BigFrank

Well you are clear in your mind that "extraordinary circumstances" do not obtain. And you tell us, with the utmost confidence, that the UK CAA shares this opinion.


I wonder whether Willie and Alex, not to mention Antonio, Enrique, Dame Marjorie and the Baroness will be impressed.

Where was it, again, that you said that you had studied European Commercial and Administrative Law?

It is an open and shut case. Airline system was not resilient to power failure and resulted in complete shut down at major hubs in UK. No other airline had problems therefore the issue was unique to the information systems of BA.

Estimates in the press currently range from £150m to £190m. If you add to that loss of potential pax and the extra advertising necessary to recover the brand for BA and the shares mark down . I would think conservatively £300m loss is not unlikely. About the same as 2*A321Neo or 3*737Max 8s or 100 times Cruz's salary. He does not appear to have been a good choice for BA.

[BEagle]

BigFrank, the CAA statement may be viewed here: https://www.caa.co.uk/News/CAA-state...rways-flights/

Perhaps you may wish to address your questions to them rather than to me?

[wiggy]

Five years after leaving BA, I worked for an ad hoc charter company. I wrote an Excel spreadsheet to do our loadsheet. It was not certificated so, of course, a written loadsheet had to be completed before departure but it sure helped at the late planning stage.

I'm not offering excuses but TBH the ability to complete manual load sheets (which FWIW could have been done) is a bit irrelevant in the context of what went on on Saturday.....As I think has been mentioned more than once amongst other things there was simply no way of getting passengers checked in and bags to the aircraft side once the system failure happened. Rightly or wrongly there wasn't the manpower available to revert to a fully manual "paper" system and/or fallback to moving checked bags from check in to aircraft side by hand, and to be fair just this once I'm pretty sure these days BA isn't alone in taking that approach to manning levels, though I'd agree BA may almost be alone in having a failure of this magnitude...

[BigFrank]

Rather than involving a 3rd party in our disagreement, let's just stick to the facts. Well, to the facts and to your confident legal spin on them, that is.

We will both agree, I think, that the central fact here is the wholly unexceptionable CAA statement which you provide a link for in your last post and which I, from that link, quote in full here:

Commenting on the delays and cancellations affecting British Airways passengers, Matt Buffey, Head of Consumer Protection at the Civil Aviation Authority, said:

"Passengers affected by the disruption to British Airways' flights are protected under EU law. The welfare of passengers must be the priority for any airline experiencing disruption and we fully expect all UK airlines to meet their obligations.
Passengers who are currently caught up in this disruption should be informed of their legal rights by British Airways, but they can find out the full details of their rights during delays and cancellations by visiting the CAA website."

Where exactly in the above are the words which justify the exceedingly presumptuous assertion in your first post on this aspect of the commercial catastrophe under consideration to the effect that:


"The CAA has clearly decided that ba's passenger delays were not caused by 'extraordinary circumstances'..."

[tubby linton]

Airbus produce some very nice apps for loadsheet and takeoff performance for use on an EFB, as part of their Flysmart package.
The loadsheet app can be used with simple inputs such as males, females etc , which bays they are sitting in and where the bags are. The app requires a specific reg as a basis to start computation. The app then produces a loadsheet and the data can be inputed into the take off performance app.
When I have been faced with similar problems I have asked the dispatcher and crew to make simple counts and then used the apps, normally the data would come from the DCS.
BA I believe send an acars message to the aircraft with the loadsheet data and aircraft performance figures.

[Dannyboy39]

I think its fair to say Mr Cruz isn't my flavour of the month. After his comments about my previous airline which "survived" last year as a missed opportunity for the European short haul market to 'readjust' itself.

[A320ECAM]

Alex Cruz better get his pen and cheque book out... that's if his hi-viz has pockets!

[BigFrank]

¿ What's in an adjective ?

"Call for Spanish boss who outsourced 700 IT jobs to India to quit after computer failure hits 300 000"

is the sub-heading in tomorrow's edition of "Herr Hitler's favourite Fleet Street title."

Is this an acceptable sub-headline relating to a Spanish multi-national company?

Would this be an acceptable sub-headline relating to a hypothetical British multi-national company?

If "yes"...would it be equally acceptable if a similar incident happened in a different company, whether real or hypothetical, not led by someone called Señor Álex Cruz to begin:

"Call for Jewish boss...." or "Call for heterosexual boss..." or "Call for paraplegic boss...." ?

[Bob Upndown]

Originally Posted by BigFrank

"Call for Spanish boss who outsourced 700 IT jobs to India to quit after computer failure hits 300 000"

is the sub-heading in tomorrow's edition of "Herr Hitler's favourite Fleet Street title."

Is this an acceptable sub-headline relating to a Spanish multi-national company?

Would this be an acceptable sub-headline relating to a hypothetical British multi-national company?

If "yes"...would it be equally acceptable if a similar incident happened in a different company, whether real or hypothetical, not led by someone called Señor Álex Cruz to begin:

"Call for Jewish boss...." or "Call for heterosexual boss..." or "Call for paraplegic boss...." ?

@Bigfrank, get a grip and go give your head a wobble. The fact is that Signor Cruz is Spanish. The fact is that he's an inexperienced cost cutter, brought in to make IAG shareholders happy. IAG are now reaping the rewards of their diligence when it comes to strategic planning and opex.

Until a short time ago, BA's brand and product was a world leader. Now, due to the appointment of an accountant rather than a business leader, the brand will remain in an unrecoverable dive until bought out by another opportunistic party.

[WHBM]

Originally Posted by Gertrude the Wombat

If they're going to do a U-turn and claim "extraordinary circumstances" they'll first have to admit that the boss was lying when he said it was a power fault.

Well he has form for this; having claimed that passengers "welcomed" having to pay for M&S sandwiches and drinks on short haul, which is patently not true when you speak to BA regulars, it's no surprise that other statements of his are made up as he is going along, as well.

His statements on Saturday that things could not be sorted out that day, but would recover on Sunday, are clearly false as well.

[old,not bold]

I sometimes wonder how securely is a cost-cutting mentality "partitioned", so it never applies to aircraft maintenance?

Ian W's succint reply - "it is not" - is exactly right, and the evidence for that can be found in any airline where the bean-counters have taken control including, of course, BA.

A maintenance provider I was once responsible for was a subsidiary of a group that fell into hard times, and I was visited by a couple of MBA holders from a firm of "consultants" who told me to reduce the workforce "now" so as to reduce costs and increase profits. It was all so simple on their spreadsheets. This was in pre-EASA BCAR days with many categories of licence; these idiots were unable to grasp that we needed full coverage to maintain our approval and stay in business. I rather suspect that BA has been the victim of similar people, one of whom appears to be masquerading as a CEO in his hi-vis jacket and bad shave.

[PAXboy]

SeenItAll

Let's wait until the true facts become known.

We shall have to rely on annonymous leaks. The Board will never let on as it would reveal their, and their predecessors, incompetence over many years.

pax britanica

... yes of course thats true but you cannot cut cut every year as well as improving revenues every year. But that what analysts and some investors demand-airlines are cyclical businesses if you don't understand that don't invest in them.

Just like goverments, who say they can cut costs and improve services at the same time. It's almost like the people who run the govt and the airlines have been on the same university courses ... People continue to vote for govts who say that - so should the investors be any different? Afterall, they may have been on the same university courses ...

crewmeal

What exactly has Alex Cruz brought to the table since taking over as Chief Executive back in 2015?

This problem long pedates him. My guess (27 years in telecommunications and IT) is that he was told that everything in IT was dandy and he believed them. BUT the cost cutting and shoe-horning together of old and new systems (as discussed earlier in this thread) will have started 25 years ago. This kind of failure has deep, deep roots. The kind that are so deep the staff are long gone (for whatever reason).

Ian W

CEOs should have a list of events flagged with 'if this happens you are toast'

INDEED and THAT is why the head of IT should be out. My late father, on seeing the change from 'personnel' to 'human resources' in the 1980s and then the start of outsourcing, commented, "You need to be able to quickly reach out and grab the throat of the person responsible. They have to know that their pay packet is at risk."

For most outsourced staff - it is not. If the company, overall, declines and stuffs up - only then might it be but the outsourced company will say that they did all they could - withint the contract and the financial constraints.

The Main Board director responsible for IT must also go. If there is no main board director for IT, then you have found the seat of the problem.

[Jet II]

Originally Posted by Bob Upndown

Until a short time ago, BA's brand and product was a world leader. Now, due to the appointment of an accountant rather than a business leader, the brand will remain in an unrecoverable dive until bought out by another opportunistic party.

Indeed - poor old Lord King must be spinning in his grave when he looks at what has become of BA. Although the rot really set in when Bob Ayling took over..

[etudiant]

One interesting side effect of extensive outsourcing shown here is that when things go wrong, there are no leaks, because the people involved are invisible. Of course, that also makes it harder for management to address the problem.

[southern duel]

The thing about all this is that when things do wrong wrong and I am not saying this should have happened but where is BS's Contingency plan ???
There have been several instances over the years where they just have not got a clue and have the attitude " it will not happen to us" well it has again.
Adverse weather - snow/high winds... .. what do we do
Bunsfield, loss of 60% of heathrows fuel............. help what do we do ?
Volcanic ash cloud.............. help what do we do ?
9/22 all aircraft over the pond return and US airspace closed for 5 days...... help what do we do ?
Terminal 1 fire ............ help what do we do ?
IT failures - numerous ........... help what do we do ?
Just a few instances where BA totally screwed up in trying to deal with them
I am not saying everything should be laid out in a manual but give the staff guidance as to what do to.
The other thing is they have not got the expereinced staff to think on their feet and make decisions. They are too frightened to make decisions and the necessary accountability.

[ExSp33db1rd]

....although the rot really set in when Bob Ayling took over..

Compounded, with increased Interest, when Willie Wonka took over.

BOAC (used to ) Take Good Care Of You.

[wiggy]

I know why it's fashionable and understandable to give BA a kicking but I seem to recall the volcanic ash brought most European airlines to a grinding halt.....

I'd have to say some of the other incidents mentioned at Heathrow (e.g. Buncefield) certainly also impacted operators other than BA, but with it being BAs main base they suffered the greatest disruption....