BA delays at LHR - Computer issue

[Andy D]

Communication might have been crap but data centres do fail

Flying Squirrels and Unspun Gyros is a great 15 min talk by Mike Christian (then of Yahoo) about how they fail, and power issues are a high factor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO2z3ttlpi4

[Tom Bangla]

Originally Posted by c52

How can anyone who's not got some kind of a grip on the rules of language hope to give clear leadership or design anything properly?

c52, some of today's text speak writers will be tomorrow's captains.

[G-CPTN]

Willie Walsh has defended the airline's handling of the flight chaos it suffered at the weekend, which left thousands of passengers stranded.

Mr Walsh, appearing in public for the first time since the incident, said he was “pleased” with how the airline had dealt with the disruption that grounded 75,000 passengers.

“I think the team under the leadership of [BA chief executive] Alex Cruz has done everything possible to get it back to flying a full schedule as quickly as possible,” he said.

“We know the cause of the problem. It was not about IT. The problem was caused by the failure of electricity power to the IT systems."

[RAT 5]

So what WW is saying is that BA are to be applauded for solving the mess so speedily and sympathetically. Indeed that may be true. As we have been taught for years, "it's not the mistakes you make (and you will for sure) it's what you do next that often is more critical." BA might well have been successful in recovery. However, our cockpit mistakes can often be corrected before there is any impact, and that is what we aim to do. In this case the impact had happened uncontrollably before the clean up could begin. What needs to be ascertained is what was the initial cause and if it was an in-house screw up that needs to be confessed ASAP, rather than try to divert attention onto how good the clean up was. The clean up also includes how fast and how generous the compensation packages are paid out. If the root cause is laid at BA's own door might that allow more claims for consequential damages for missed flights etc. to be lodged? There must surely be some cases where the EU minimum is not enough. If that is the case BA would like to light the smoke bombs and spin the mirrors ASAP. We await the outcome, and perhaps a Parliamentary committee will become interested.

[beamender99]

The words of WW.
Walsh backs BA boss after computer chaos - BBC News

[sceh]

rubbish

I hope Walsh knows more about running airlines than IT. This had nothing to do with power suplies at all. The most likely cause is a virus attack or more likely a simple failure to do things in the right sequence when an update was deployed.
The CEO should be sacked for incompetence and Walsh sacked for lying

[Heidhurtin]

I agree - there's no power quality issue I can think of which would cause this level of carnage, unless the various backup systems (and I'll include software in this) have been seriously neglected. Sadly one of the first things companies cut to make savings is maintenance, and when nothing goes wrong immediately, getting the money, and commitment to standards, back is a real fight. Management seem to regard people who point out the risks as obstacles to be overcome.

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by G-CPTN

“We know the cause of the problem. It was not about IT. The problem was caused by the failure of electricity power to the IT systems."

British Airways IT crisis mystery as energy suppliers say there was no power surge

[Self Loading Freight]

"The crash of the aircraft after the engines flamed out was not caused by bad fuel management. It was caused by lack of fuel."

[syseng68k]

The Register article and comments deleted ?...

Just checked a few minutes ago and The Register article and comments appear to have been deleted, leaving no trace. Wonder if they have had some heavy lawyers letters to shut them up ?...

[pax britanica]

Looking to lighten the mood a little I wonder if anyone has noticed that all BA senior management seem to have the word Chief in their title so to modify part of the well known saying perhaps BA's problem here was really

Too many Chiefs AND too many Indians[.

But how are BA going to do an inquiry without any impartial people.
Their bosses want a cover up and so do the specialists because it cannot be power problems alone unless they are guilty of the most extraordinary level of ineptness when it came to support systems to provide continuity of power , protection from rogue transient voltages or inadequate system restart processes.

[Cows getting bigger]

Now I'm not a CEO of a big FTSE company but I have been a MD of a few small set-ups. If my IT man came in and said that the system had gone down and lost me squllions of £ due to a power supply problem, I would be reminding him that this was most definitely still an IT problem.

WW is talking crap.

PS. Interesting he says ".....failure of electricity power to IT systems" Plural. Hmmmmm

[A320ECAM]

Willie Walsh would sell cures for cancer had they been discovered. Absolutely shambles that he is defending that hi-viz wearing Alex Cruz.

[RexBanner]

The laughable thing is that some clueless PR person obviously said "you know what will look good, Alex? Wear a high vis vest in your video, it'll show that you're mucking in and getting your hands dirty". That clown is so wet behind the ears and clueless he's gone along with it. Worse still it could have even been his idea to start with. As someone else put it, being the CEO of Poundland does not qualify you for the top job at Harrods. Nowhere was this more aptly demonstrated than by Cruz. It's not as if he even made a success of Vueling! The place was a shambles when he left, they almost lost their AOC and he's still facing fraud charges. It beggars belief that he's deemed suitable by Walsh.

[zed3]

RexBanner... so I presume that WW got him in to do the dirty and save him the trouble of carrying the can. The Irish can be shrewd. I haven't liked BA since he (WW) arrived. I put my own money elsewhere. BA was a reputable, national carrier, not any more and it seems to be sinking even further. A great shame for a once great company.

[Caribbean Boy]

Originally Posted by RexBanner

The laughable thing is that some clueless PR person obviously said "you know what will look good, Alex? Wear a high vis vest in your video, it'll show that you're mucking in and getting your hands dirty". That clown is so wet behind the ears and clueless he's gone along with it. Worse still it could have even been his idea to start with. As someone else put it, being the CEO of Poundland does not qualify you for the top job at Harrods. Nowhere was this more aptly demonstrated than by Cruz. It's not as if he even made a success of Vueling! The place was a shambles when he left, they almost lost their AOC and he's still facing fraud charges. It beggars belief that he's deemed suitable by Walsh.

One thing to bear in mind is that IAG is a Spanish company whose chairman (Antonio Vazquez Romero) is Spanish . Willie Walsh reports to Romero and Walsh has no fewer than seven Spaniards reporting to him, namely:

• Enrique Dupuy de Lome, Chief Financial Officer
• Alex Cruz, Chairman and CEO BA
• Luis Gallego Martin, CEO Iberia
• Jose Antonio Barrionuevo Urgel, CFO Iberia
• Javier Sanchez-Prieto, CEO Vueling
• Jorge Saco Inglesias, CFO Vueling
• Ignacio de Torres Zabala, Director of Global Services

So, there may well have been pressure to appoint a Spaniard (Cruz) in November 2015 to run BA despite Vueling's appalling customer satisfaction track record.

[gordonroxburgh]

Nice little par in the Guardian (ignore the ref to Waterside)

BA’s creaking IT infrastructure includes over 500 data cabinets across six halls around its Waterside base, northwest of Heathrow. A contractor with knowledge of Boadicea House said: “It’s a very old facility, there are lots and lots of problems with it. We weren’t particularly surprised, knowing the set-up there.” He added that a number of senior managers at the data centre have retired or left in the past three years.

[SeenItAll]

Originally Posted by Heathrow Harry

There is/was a persistent rumour around Aberdeen that back in the 80's an engineer pressed the large red Emergency Shutdown button on the Forties platform offshore to "check that it worked" - it did............. took over 3 days and the loss of 300,000 barrels of production - say $60 million - to get it back on stream.................

And there is fact if some engineer had done the same thing to test whether the blowout protector on the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico was actually capable of working, BP would have saved itself over $40 billion in fines, cleanup costs and compensation.

[DaveReidUK]

Interesting comment in the DM a couple of days ago:

"Was working in Waterside (BA HQ) and we told BA management about the flaws in the TCS iFLY system. They wouldn't listen and this is what you get. As for the power outage that is absolute rubbish. Two data centres, BoHo and Cranebank, both have dual power feeds from two suppliers and then there are the diesel generators that automatically kick in too. The last major outage with iFLY couldn't be fixed by TCS after 7hrs. The small group of guys left in BoHo were told to sort it out and it only took them 30mins. TCS have no skills in this area at all, they're nice guys but there it ends. Experienced senior management like Sarah Endersby, Steve Harding etc etc all got rid of. IAG directors to blame inc BA CEO Alex Cruz."

TCS = Tata Consultancy Services
BoHo = Boadicea House (Hatton Cross)
iFLY = BA's passenger services platform

[Trav a la]

Originally Posted by SeenItAll

And there is fact if some engineer had done the same thing to test whether the blowout protector on the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico was actually capable of working, BT would have been able to save itself over $40 billion in fines, cleanup costs and compensation.

Think you mean BP.