Yet more IT problems at BA
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: UK
Posts: 47
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
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.
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.
Join Date: Mar 2019
Location: Prague
Posts: 65
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
It may seem very difficult now but I did everything you say, manually.
Set up loadsheet in advance of a/c arrival.
1. A/C registration gives weights including pantry equipment/catering for that route. May not have been extremely accurate but today isn't either (see below).
2. Forecast of freight and pax numbers allows you, as traffic officer/despatcher, to create load plan. Usually dead standard (all the bags in the back lads), freight in the front or similar based on aicraft type. Use Mark 1 human brain, exerience and training. Occasionally with very small loads, add ballast.
3. Bound up the stairs when she arrives and stick your head on the flight deck and say "How much fuel for the loadsheet skip?" Add numbers to loadsheet.
4. Check-in closes. Add pax numbers and bags to loadsheet.
5. Check bags and cargo in the right place.
6. Drop trim line and put a cross where the TOW and LW are.
7. Add LMCs (last minute changes) for the runner that arrived at check-in 10 minutes before departure.
8. Sign and present clipboard to captain.
9. Tear off a copy and exit stage left.
10. Put on headset (or just earplugs) and do startup and pushback.
Now your electronic jobby might look highly accurate but with the lack of skill and different languages at LGW, it has been known for the a/c to depart with the inbound cargo still on board and not on the loadsheet.
And all my manual jobs took to the air and landed safely, so not much must have been wrong.
Electronics (like calculators) give an illusion of accuracy and expertise where none may exists.
Set up loadsheet in advance of a/c arrival.
1. A/C registration gives weights including pantry equipment/catering for that route. May not have been extremely accurate but today isn't either (see below).
2. Forecast of freight and pax numbers allows you, as traffic officer/despatcher, to create load plan. Usually dead standard (all the bags in the back lads), freight in the front or similar based on aicraft type. Use Mark 1 human brain, exerience and training. Occasionally with very small loads, add ballast.
3. Bound up the stairs when she arrives and stick your head on the flight deck and say "How much fuel for the loadsheet skip?" Add numbers to loadsheet.
4. Check-in closes. Add pax numbers and bags to loadsheet.
5. Check bags and cargo in the right place.
6. Drop trim line and put a cross where the TOW and LW are.
7. Add LMCs (last minute changes) for the runner that arrived at check-in 10 minutes before departure.
8. Sign and present clipboard to captain.
9. Tear off a copy and exit stage left.
10. Put on headset (or just earplugs) and do startup and pushback.
Now your electronic jobby might look highly accurate but with the lack of skill and different languages at LGW, it has been known for the a/c to depart with the inbound cargo still on board and not on the loadsheet.
And all my manual jobs took to the air and landed safely, so not much must have been wrong.
Electronics (like calculators) give an illusion of accuracy and expertise where none may exists.
I can remember when reservations, messaging and cargo applications ran on mainframes with contractually guaranteed, no critical failure in the first three years of operation and not to exceed three critical failures in the total life of the product. Purging all crappy components during production and with multi-host file sharing, redundant power supplies, failover systems, transaction recovery on the fly to ensure availability. when everything went really pear-shaped, only then would you resort to backups.
Then along came MS and Windows, the blue screen of death, no failure analysis, crappy build quality, and with games included, how many would you like at the knock-down price of peanuts?
I am sure aircraft and engine build quality went the same way!, I'm just glad to be out of the rotten business.
IG
Then along came MS and Windows, the blue screen of death, no failure analysis, crappy build quality, and with games included, how many would you like at the knock-down price of peanuts?
I am sure aircraft and engine build quality went the same way!, I'm just glad to be out of the rotten business.
IG
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: If this is Tuesday, it must be?
Posts: 651
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
If you do not understand the language of business, please refrain from commenting on it. Referring to IT as an overhead was a comment made in that context and is precisely correct, even if it does not fit with your (incorrect in that context) worldview.
Thread Starter
I'm mystified that there's any argument about this.
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Leeds, UK
Posts: 281
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Are the Royal Mail trucks that deliver mail overheads? I think not. So why would the IT that runs the sorting depots and responds to tracking requests and capture the gun scans when mail is delivered etc be considered overheads? IT now is value added business essential, not once a month payroll or profit/loss production. No IT == no business. So clearly not an overhead but a vital cog in the delivery of services/goods. It's silly to argue otherwise. It's also silly to try and save money on IT and have these frequent outages. I've worked for enough Fortune/FTSE 100 companies to know outages cause brand damage, and a well configured data center with appropriate Disaster Recovery (DR)/dual site operation is worth it's weight in gold. How would FEDEX or UPS manage if they lost IT for 24 hours every so often? The entire company would be at a standstill, all 500 planes and 50K employees sat idle until it comes back.
G
G
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Barnes, London
Posts: 75
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I recall with fondness a 'Management' brief in BrainCrank, moons ago, attesting to the huge improvements anticipated with a "New Computer" at BA (BEA/BOAC).
Management droned on interminably highlighting the advantages, 65% less input here, 70% less work there, savings over 80% etc.etc
.
A grizzled old Flight Engineer in front of me kept putting his hand up seeking a question and was irritably ignored by the burbling speaker.
Eventually the Engineer managed a response and said. " Do I understand that buying this computer will reduce workloads by over 80% Plus?"
"Yes, Yes" replied management, clearly upset that someone had not appreciated his prolonged explanation
" Well", said the Engineer " My question is Why did we not buy Two!!
Meeting concluded with endless hilarity by all bar one!
Management droned on interminably highlighting the advantages, 65% less input here, 70% less work there, savings over 80% etc.etc
.
A grizzled old Flight Engineer in front of me kept putting his hand up seeking a question and was irritably ignored by the burbling speaker.
Eventually the Engineer managed a response and said. " Do I understand that buying this computer will reduce workloads by over 80% Plus?"
"Yes, Yes" replied management, clearly upset that someone had not appreciated his prolonged explanation
" Well", said the Engineer " My question is Why did we not buy Two!!
Meeting concluded with endless hilarity by all bar one!
Thread Starter
I'm not sure why we're getting so wound up about what accountants call things, when we all agree that airlines should be run not by them, but by pilots and engineers.
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: UK
Age: 78
Posts: 249
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Before retirement I was a Computer power & environment specialist and carried out many Data Centre & Computer room surveys from small to large. One of the first questions asked was, how much per hour would the company loose if the room went down or would they still be in business. Only one company knew, Fidelity Finance in Tunbridge Wells, they had servers making over a million pounds an hour so the centre was perfect. Very rare. Visited an airlines data centre in a north London airport once, it was a total mess, running on the edge, if one aircon unit had failed the computers would have shut down due to exceeding temperature limits. Not a nice way to shut down, as machines just panic and crash leaving the software in a mess. I hope they have improved it since then. An example of a company that went under due to a system failure in their Slough date centre was Blackberry was not overnight but the begining of the end. Is BA on this slippery slope, I hope not but the cracks are staring to show.
Dave, if you stick your human factors head on separate from a business/accounting head, words matter. Classifying something as a cost creates a negative bias in the minds of those making decisions, which influences their whole perception of that function and how they treat it.
We work very hard on how we communicate to avoid all sorts of bias, and there is material for a number of PhDs in the sociology and psychology of accountancy, but because they don’t directly kill people when they get it wrong, it isn’t a growth field.
We work very hard on how we communicate to avoid all sorts of bias, and there is material for a number of PhDs in the sociology and psychology of accountancy, but because they don’t directly kill people when they get it wrong, it isn’t a growth field.
Thread Starter
Fuel is a cost, crews are a cost, airport charges are a cost, IT is a cost ...
Join Date: Aug 2018
Location: UK
Posts: 26
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Exactly the issue. Decision makers try to reduce costs, and we know efficiencies are squeezed out of all of those examples you've given wherever possible. A saving on an IT system would be very tempting as anything costing the business money will be under intense scrutiny.
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Leeds, UK
Posts: 281
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
A smart business these days will realise that with every employee and every customer and potential customer having a smartphone (aka mini-computer) in their hand then IT can be leveraged to do perform so much business transformation. Look at any business and they're using IT to be agile. Look at any Government department and see how they insist on doing things some convoluted way that almost seems designed to be as labour intensive as possible. I despair when Police programs are on TV and a pair of cops will waste hours establishing somebody's ID, when a $1000 fingerprint device in every car will do it in seconds. All airlines now have eliminated paper wherever possible. It's madness to pennies on the infrastructure required to keep it all running.
G
G
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: UK
Posts: 47
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I don't have an MBA, having resisted pressure to do one (ironically, while I was working at BA), but you don't need one to recognise that IT, for an airline, is both an overhead (in accounting terms) and critical infrastructure (in operational terms).
I'm mystified that there's any argument about this.
I'm mystified that there's any argument about this.
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: UK
Posts: 47
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
One doesn't need to have an MBA to understand this, I don't either and I don't teach on MBA classes.
Join Date: Apr 2019
Location: EDSP
Posts: 334
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I don't understand it, either. In presenting a business case, you are demonstrating that the costs are necessary to generate revenues that provide a margin. If you argue the case properly, spending the right amount of money is important in obtaining value for money, rather than the cheapest solution. Ergo having a properly maintained and viable IT infrastructure is a critical success factor in running an airline (not the only one) and thus requires the right amount of overhead being budgetted to do the job properly - to fail to provide the monetary resources (in capex and opex) is risking company/brand reputation and competitive position.
One doesn't need to have an MBA to understand this, I don't either and I don't teach on MBA classes.
One doesn't need to have an MBA to understand this, I don't either and I don't teach on MBA classes.