BA delays at LHR - Computer issue
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"But Alex Cruz, the airline’s chairman, said that after a “rough start”, passengers now welcomed the opportunity to pay for M&S snacks on European short haul flights.He told the Sunday Times: It's going great. Customers say to us: 'Finally, I have good choices. No more chicken or beef'.".
BA also always comment only about the food, whereas the key thing most appreciated on short haul was a refreshing drink. And even for food, having a choice of chicken or beef had long been in their dreams, having to put up with the "birdseed". The drinks had become the only reasonable bit.
Media reports are that BA managers are as rare as hen's teeth on the ground at Heathrow, lack of information and according to Sky the police as involved that they a preventing people using bag drop.
BA is slowly but surely going down the tubes and this debacle will only accelerate the fall.
BA is slowly but surely going down the tubes and this debacle will only accelerate the fall.
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Is the IT problem really fixed? I say this by asking people to look at BA.com.
Firstly the site is very flaky and frequently shows error code 404 server not responding
Secondly look at LHR dept for today, shocking number of canx but several flts are showed as canx and in the next line flt dept with a time. Clearly there are no w/x problems they have plenty of parked a/c according to the TV so it can only be IT problems data lost who is on which a/c etc I fear what was once a proud British company is in terminal decline
Firstly the site is very flaky and frequently shows error code 404 server not responding
Secondly look at LHR dept for today, shocking number of canx but several flts are showed as canx and in the next line flt dept with a time. Clearly there are no w/x problems they have plenty of parked a/c according to the TV so it can only be IT problems data lost who is on which a/c etc I fear what was once a proud British company is in terminal decline
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Media reports are that BA managers are as rare as hen's teeth on the ground at Heathrow, lack of information and according to Sky the police as involved that they a preventing people using bag drop.
BA is slowly but surely going down the tubes and this debacle will only accelerate the fall.
BA is slowly but surely going down the tubes and this debacle will only accelerate the fall.
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Computer Weekly going for upgrade problem:
Upgrade error hits BA flights
And a more detailed suggestion/error-guess of one possibility
https://www.lola.tech/articles/why-d...wntime-13.html
short form:
- Departure Control System called Altea recently installed
- Many big updates roll out a month after launch
- The downtime started early Tuesday morning– Developers almost always choose early Tuesday mornings to push update. Everyone’s asleep or at work, so it helps minimize disruption.
If in anyway true the managements mention of power-failure seems
Upgrade error hits BA flights
And a more detailed suggestion/error-guess of one possibility
https://www.lola.tech/articles/why-d...wntime-13.html
short form:
- Departure Control System called Altea recently installed
- Many big updates roll out a month after launch
- The downtime started early Tuesday morning– Developers almost always choose early Tuesday mornings to push update. Everyone’s asleep or at work, so it helps minimize disruption.
If in anyway true the managements mention of power-failure seems
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As both SLF (derogatory as that title is) and a highly experienced IT leader (biased towards Infrastructure) and someone who spent nearly 10 hours yesterday in T5 , I feel I have something to contribute.
First off, let's not confuse DR with BCP, although both failed yesterday.
For example while IT wherever were toiling over bringing systems back online , the CW/CE/First queues, that were right out of the terminal, were being "organised" by 2 women who were effectively herding cats. They were on a hiding to nothing as people were joining any one and then losing it when the staff come back round again 20 minutes later telling them to go and join the mega queue at WT. Not enough staff and definitely no sign of Managment at all. This got better during the afternoon, but still no sign of any Senior Staff at all. Even this morning they were trying to get us on a flight as my wife received a text to say it was cancelled but nothing showed on their system. Where were the managers, nowhere to be seen, as they "were in meetings". Maybe those meetings should have been through the night so everyone could be briefed for 0430.
On a more serious note we were told by staff they couldn't find any megaphones to replace the non working PA. I would suggest that these should be easy to find in case of a real emergency.
As for IT, outsourcing is not something I would advocate, but when it has crossed my path, I would never allow a system to go live without:
Rigorous functional testing of system
Rigorous DR Testing
Sign off of all infrastructure designs from someone qualified to do so and counter sign it myself.
The outsourcer should not have unrestricted responsibility for design of something thousands of miles away that isn't theirs. This also makes it easy to swap supplier should they prove to be sub par, which they will.
I guarantee someone within BA has signed that design off as suitable, and that's where heads should roll initially. Then look at your "partner"
Also all the previous posts regarding bean counters are a given as well. Scourge of IT !
On a personal note I'm not actually buying the power excuse but as we don't like to speculate within these halls I'll keep my opinion to myself. I will say however all the systems affected were internet facing.
Anyway, got all that off my chest, and resigned to go back to work on Tuesday instead of enjoying a few cold ones on the Greek coastline !
First off, let's not confuse DR with BCP, although both failed yesterday.
For example while IT wherever were toiling over bringing systems back online , the CW/CE/First queues, that were right out of the terminal, were being "organised" by 2 women who were effectively herding cats. They were on a hiding to nothing as people were joining any one and then losing it when the staff come back round again 20 minutes later telling them to go and join the mega queue at WT. Not enough staff and definitely no sign of Managment at all. This got better during the afternoon, but still no sign of any Senior Staff at all. Even this morning they were trying to get us on a flight as my wife received a text to say it was cancelled but nothing showed on their system. Where were the managers, nowhere to be seen, as they "were in meetings". Maybe those meetings should have been through the night so everyone could be briefed for 0430.
On a more serious note we were told by staff they couldn't find any megaphones to replace the non working PA. I would suggest that these should be easy to find in case of a real emergency.
As for IT, outsourcing is not something I would advocate, but when it has crossed my path, I would never allow a system to go live without:
Rigorous functional testing of system
Rigorous DR Testing
Sign off of all infrastructure designs from someone qualified to do so and counter sign it myself.
The outsourcer should not have unrestricted responsibility for design of something thousands of miles away that isn't theirs. This also makes it easy to swap supplier should they prove to be sub par, which they will.
I guarantee someone within BA has signed that design off as suitable, and that's where heads should roll initially. Then look at your "partner"
Also all the previous posts regarding bean counters are a given as well. Scourge of IT !
On a personal note I'm not actually buying the power excuse but as we don't like to speculate within these halls I'll keep my opinion to myself. I will say however all the systems affected were internet facing.
Anyway, got all that off my chest, and resigned to go back to work on Tuesday instead of enjoying a few cold ones on the Greek coastline !
.Software issue ? In my experience, you test and test and test prior to an upgrade, then push out the software upgrade at the least crucial time of day. Then if it all goes horribly wrong, you roll back the release to the previous version (prior to the upgrade). Although this failure means you might not have tested everything sufficiently, you only have a short glitch and everything should be back up running again soon. The worst part is knowing that you have to test the whole shooting match again to find the needle in a haystack that caused the initial problem.
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This was last published in March 2001
The CW article refers to a long-ago change. The more recent upgrade was some time last year, I believe.
The CW article refers to a long-ago change. The more recent upgrade was some time last year, I believe.
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,,, Power supply issue - surely not .
Software issue ? In my experience, you test and test and test prior to an upgrade, then push out the software upgrade at the least crucial time of day. Then if it all goes horribly wrong, you roll back the release to the previous version (prior to the upgrade). Although this failure means you might not have tested everything sufficiently, you only have a short glitch and everything should be back up running again soon. The worst part is knowing that you have to test the whole shooting match again to find the needle in a haystack that caused the initial problem.
.Software issue ? In my experience, you test and test and test prior to an upgrade, then push out the software upgrade at the least crucial time of day. Then if it all goes horribly wrong, you roll back the release to the previous version (prior to the upgrade). Although this failure means you might not have tested everything sufficiently, you only have a short glitch and everything should be back up running again soon. The worst part is knowing that you have to test the whole shooting match again to find the needle in a haystack that caused the initial problem.
I know it is not the done thing to mention this place on PPrune but at the heart of the BA fiasco and the no food and the shrinking leg room is
Bad Flight Experience, BLAME Wall Street - Airliners.net
Bad Flight Experience, BLAME Wall Street - Airliners.net
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Wow! Investors want decent returns!!! Shock Horror.......... I'm amazed anyone invests in the airlines - they are about par with Football teams and luxury yachts as a great way to lose your shirt..................
Once the tax payer woke up and the various subsidies (legal & illegal) started to be cut the airlines HAVE to attract investors - and that has led them down the path of LCA's and cuts in the legacy carriers. Personally I regret the effect - but people can now travel further and cheaper than ever before
Once the tax payer woke up and the various subsidies (legal & illegal) started to be cut the airlines HAVE to attract investors - and that has led them down the path of LCA's and cuts in the legacy carriers. Personally I regret the effect - but people can now travel further and cheaper than ever before
Yes, OK, blame the shareholders for demanding short-term profits......but it isn't as simple as that. The shareholders in the frame are the executives whose over-generous, excessive remuneration packages include shares, so they are the share-holders who are sacrificing their company to make a quick few million bucks. Other shareholders, ie pension funds, financial funds and so on, and of course private investors, do not, on the whole, demand short term profits; they are in it for the long run.
I was recruited into BOAC to join an Associate Company and for years felt a huge sense of pride at belonging to that family, regarded world-wide as the acme of excellence.
As I have watched BA descend into being a foreign-owned carrier with an unfairly dominant position at LHR, whose standards of operations, customer service and maintenance have been for some time on a par with third-world failures, I am ashamed that it still has the gall to drag us in Great Britain down by calling itself "British", as though it were our national airline. I would like to think that there is a legal bar to false descriptions like that.
This latest fiasco with their IT will prove, I hope, the final nail in the coffin.
I hear that the official root cause is a "power failure". Words fail me; if that is true (who knows?) it shows staggering management incompetence. What would BA say if Heathrow were to shut down because of a "power failure"? No-break alternative supplies have been commonplace in any organisation that depends on its power for decades, including most of the airports that BA uses.
So I'm not impressed by a Spanish gentleman wearing a hi-vis jacket to pretend he's at the heart of things telling me that's the reason for the failure. It's the reason he should have been shoved out of the door by now. Without the mega-payoff. Followed closely by that brand-destroyer from Ireland.
I was recruited into BOAC to join an Associate Company and for years felt a huge sense of pride at belonging to that family, regarded world-wide as the acme of excellence.
As I have watched BA descend into being a foreign-owned carrier with an unfairly dominant position at LHR, whose standards of operations, customer service and maintenance have been for some time on a par with third-world failures, I am ashamed that it still has the gall to drag us in Great Britain down by calling itself "British", as though it were our national airline. I would like to think that there is a legal bar to false descriptions like that.
This latest fiasco with their IT will prove, I hope, the final nail in the coffin.
I hear that the official root cause is a "power failure". Words fail me; if that is true (who knows?) it shows staggering management incompetence. What would BA say if Heathrow were to shut down because of a "power failure"? No-break alternative supplies have been commonplace in any organisation that depends on its power for decades, including most of the airports that BA uses.
So I'm not impressed by a Spanish gentleman wearing a hi-vis jacket to pretend he's at the heart of things telling me that's the reason for the failure. It's the reason he should have been shoved out of the door by now. Without the mega-payoff. Followed closely by that brand-destroyer from Ireland.
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At the risk of being contrary, I think many, if not most, of the posts in this thread are a bit too dismissive of BA's IT procedures. While it is satisfying to chalk this 
to incompetence or cost-cutting, we don't know the answer yet. Just as airliner accidents now-a-days typically result from a confluence of multiple unexpected or untoward circumstances, so too do IT disasters.
I suspect that rather than being juvenile, BA's IT procedures are pretty advanced and very cognizant of the damage wrought by failures, with a lot of redundancy built in. Let's wait until the true facts become known.
But I worry that there will be a substantial noncomparability between this IT incident and an airliner accident. The latter is investigated professionally by the AAIB, and the results made public, while who knows what transparency will exist with the former?
to incompetence or cost-cutting, we don't know the answer yet. Just as airliner accidents now-a-days typically result from a confluence of multiple unexpected or untoward circumstances, so too do IT disasters.I suspect that rather than being juvenile, BA's IT procedures are pretty advanced and very cognizant of the damage wrought by failures, with a lot of redundancy built in. Let's wait until the true facts become known.
But I worry that there will be a substantial noncomparability between this IT incident and an airliner accident. The latter is investigated professionally by the AAIB, and the results made public, while who knows what transparency will exist with the former?
HH
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. In the early years of a companies life it is possible to have better profits year on year but that is unsustainable unless you look over a longer period of time and measure a companies performance over say 5-7 years .
And yes airlines are businesses and there to make money for their stockholders but they also provide a vital service and if you keep paring away at that service you will end up not making a profit. But I come back to my point that instituitional shareholders and analysts are unrealistic and damaging in demanding more profit every year
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. In the early years of a companies life it is possible to have better profits year on year but that is unsustainable unless you look over a longer period of time and measure a companies performance over say 5-7 years .
And yes airlines are businesses and there to make money for their stockholders but they also provide a vital service and if you keep paring away at that service you will end up not making a profit. But I come back to my point that instituitional shareholders and analysts are unrealistic and damaging in demanding more profit every year
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Wow! Investors want decent returns!!! Shock Horror.......... I'm amazed anyone invests in the airlines - they are about par with Football teams and luxury yachts as a great way to lose your shirt..................
Once the tax payer woke up and the various subsidies (legal & illegal) started to be cut the airlines HAVE to attract investors - and that has led them down the path of LCA's and cuts in the legacy carriers. Personally I regret the effect - but people can now travel further and cheaper than ever before
Once the tax payer woke up and the various subsidies (legal & illegal) started to be cut the airlines HAVE to attract investors - and that has led them down the path of LCA's and cuts in the legacy carriers. Personally I regret the effect - but people can now travel further and cheaper than ever before
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IT spending is bottom of the list as most management can't see the benefit of spending all that money on 1's and 0's. Until something like this happens.
They obviously had b*gger all redundancy as a 'power failure' at a single site managed to completely nuke their worldwide operations.
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.....
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.....
