16/4 Systemwide Outage at American Airlines
Back to Forum- This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 20 Apr 2013
at 16:33 by MartynSinclair.
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VintageKrugParticipantQuite a serious outage at American Airlines yesterday, though not a peep from the regular travellers on here, or indeed BT itself on what must have been the biggest aviation news story yesterday.
I’m sure as airlines become ever more reliant on their systems for e-ticketing, this won’t be the only one we’ll see.
Very well handled by Tom Horton, and the power of a personal youtube message, pioneered by another airline CEO a few year’s ago, works very well to address the issue with authority:
17 Apr 2013
at 07:53
MartynSinclairParticipantI booked an AA ticket last night West Coast to East. As booking firmed up, the system froze so I did not manage to write down the confirmation number.
I called AA, heard about the outage, told there was a 2 hour wait. 24 minutes later, my call had been answered and I was told the booking had been made but as I was using an overseas credit card, it would remain pending for an hour or so.
30 minutes later, reservation confirmed.
The reservations person I spoke to did say mayhem was an understatement for what had happened.
17 Apr 2013
at 08:14
FormerlyDoSParticipant“Quite a serious outage at American Airlines yesterday, though not a peep from the regular travellers on here, or indeed BT itself on what must have been the biggest aviation news story yesterday.”
Maybe the focus of the media is on the bombings in Boston.
Compared to that event, this is slow news day stuff, as it affects only a small percentage of the public, compared to a very high percent reacting to Boston.
As I am in the USA currently, I can say that this is the case with people I spoke to, here.
17 Apr 2013
at 10:32
Binman62ParticipantI am not aware of the details of the issue, but I do know that for 20 years at least, AA have used centralised load ad balance from Dallas coveing their global operations.
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s they were so confident of their system that they abandoned contingency planning for this particular issue, taking the view that the costs of planning for failure outweighed the costs of failure itself.
If the cause of this issue was their inability to deliver load sheets and balance data then it is the first time I have ever heard of them having such a huge problem. It may have caused enormous inconvenience but it also appears that their strategy was also quite correct.
20 Apr 2013
at 11:09
FormerlyDoSParticipant“it also appears that their strategy was also quite correct.”
Agreed, but I bet they will review it now 🙂
20 Apr 2013
at 12:50
MartynSinclairParticipantTrying to book on aa.com for a flight on Monday. System appears to be down again..
20 Apr 2013
at 16:33 -
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