Hey General, CAT II vs SBS

[strega7]

I was wondering if your gonna hammer on the Comair people like you did the SkyWest people over this computer problem. Since we (SkyWest) couldn't come through for your cousin on that foggy day in SLC I was wondering if any of your other relatives were affected by Comairs SBS failure.

 

[IAPS_degraded]

Bump, General, Bump

 

[JetPilot_Mike]

Bump, General, Bump

Is General your big brother or something? You're following him around like his little lap dog.

 

[IAPS_degraded]

.....

 

[Hovernut]

I'm sure the General has better things to do on Christmas than post of this board like the rest of us poor bastards! Now where did I leave that darned egg nogg?

If this rain parts company, I may declare tomorrow SBS day at Disney/MGM and burn another day off my season pass!

 

[Stifler's Mom]

I was wondering if your gonna hammer on the Comair people like you did the SkyWest people over this computer problem. Since we (SkyWest) couldn't come through for your cousin on that foggy day in SLC I was wondering if any of your other relatives were affected by Comairs SBS failure.

Comair should get hammered over this. A whole $hit load of people have had their Christmas screwed up because of this.

If it was ASA, I would hammer on them too. I heard on our ops freq in ATL the other day that a lady missed a flight to ZUR because the rampers couldn't park them in a timely manner. Evidently she was on her way to get married.

I have to shake my head at airline management. What a freakin' case study nightmare for business school students.

 

[sweptback]

But the problem is that it's cheaper to do it the wrong way (most likely much less expensive to do so) and hope you don't get stung that often. Then when you do get stung, hopefully it isn't that bad. If it isn't, lather rinse and repeat as necessary. If you do get stung bad, sadly you'll probably still come out ahead cost-wise.

I'm not ripping on Comair, they run a quality operation. It's more of a general rant.

There's no brand loyalty (or if there is, it's very little) in the airline industry anymore. Actually, there's very little loyalty to brands overall, but that's another story for another time. People affected by the snafu will be pissed for about a month, then when it comes time to buy their next ticket they won't remember or care. This is what fuels the desire to just do it "good enough" to save a buck or two... it doesn't really hurt the company to do so. If it did, you better believe that it would have been done right.

There will be a few that will never fly Comair again (or Delta because they don't know the difference). But really, the cost to the company in lost business will be minimal. Rarely do you hear of a company going under because they do a terrible job of dealing with customers.

 

[T-Gates]

Anyone who rags on Comair for this is an idiot. I can garantee that if any other airline's Crew Tracking software went T.U. they'd be grounded too. Except mabye the small 135 carriers that make you do the "Color-by-Numbers" duty time sheets.

 

[Ben Dover]

If anyone didn't get enough turkey or ham to eat today, I hear that crow is being served at the General's house...

 

[Stifler's Mom]

Anyone who rags on Comair for this is an idiot. I can garantee that if any other airline's Crew Tracking software went T.U. they'd be grounded too.

Sorry T-Gates, but I disagree. I'm sure that most airlines would be paralyzed because of this, but it should not happen to begin with, and if it does, there should be a backup plan. Even if it's pen and paper. Better late than never.

If you were one of the many Holiday Travelers that didn't make it to Christmas with family and friends, you'd be singing a different tune.


(CNN) -- Tens of thousands of travelers spent Christmas in an airport, as Comair canceled all of its flights.

Comair, which flies an average of 30,000 people per day, called off all 1,160 daily flights for both Saturday and Sunday. It will resume a limited schedule Monday, Comair spokesman Don Bornhorst said.

The computer system Comair uses to book pilots for flights broke down, he said.

Comair could not pinpoint a reason for the computer crash and could not say why there was no backup system.

There was "a lot of stress because of multiple changes going through the system," Bornhorst said.

That only exacerbated problems caused by severe weather this week for Comair, a Delta subsidiary that flies to 118 cities.

Many of the stranded passengers were at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, Comair's hub.

Some passengers have had to sleep at the airport, Bornhorst said.

Other travelers have been booked on Delta flights, bused to airports in other cities or given vouchers for nearby hotels, he said.

To make matters worse, many bags had been misplaced, he said.

One woman said she and her family had decided to drive from Cincinnati to Rochester, New York, for her daughter's baptism.

The family's first flight had been canceled, and a second booking was lost.

"We got here this morning and they didn't have our reservation. There's nobody to talk to," the woman said.

Trying to get on another flight would mean waiting in a five-hour line, she said.

 

[doh]

My wife's a dba and she said that there is no disaster recovery plan in place. If there was this could not happen. I know I sound like Cartman here but That's what my mom...er... wife says.

 

[T-Gates]

Sorry T-Gates, but I disagree. I'm sure that most airlines would be paralyzed because of this, but it should not happen to begin with, and if it does, there should be a backup plan. Even if it's pen and paper. Better late than never.

It's all good, my point was just that how many other airlines really have their Crew Tracking backed up in paper form? Especially in a fleet as large as CMR? Everywhere I have worked has a backup for when the flight planning computers go down (manual releases). But I have never heard of what would happen if the scheduling software sh!t the bed. Mabye I'm worng, who knows. I'm sure everyone is quickly backing up thier systems just incase now.

Merry Christmas!

 

[filejw]

Well I know at NWA we would still be flying .More than once I'v been released over the phone with the computer down and as for crew tracking they would do it by hand.Crew times ,that's why you need a small log book for day to day stuff.

 

[dispatchguy]

The problem is is with the massive irregular operations the past few days, and crews flying overblock, doing all the math manually for an op as large as comair; well, it would be a ready-made incident for the CVG FSDO to see how violations they could write for going over duty times by a minute, etc.

Yeah, its not pretty, but they had to do it.

I was a crew scheduler at UAL back in 1999/2000, and when their crew scheduling system took a dump (same system as dispatch - Unimatic), we just stopped flying until it came back up.

UAL has a business resumption center at the Chicago Reservations Office just north of ORD on, I cant recall which road. One day I was driving into ORD to go to work, and the traffic guy on the radio said that the traffic around UAL WHQ due to a fire at that location, at the corner of Algonquin and Linneman, and I thought to myself driving in, "Isnt that WHQ's location?". This backup center has a backup Unimatic mainframe mirroring the main system every 5 seconds.

UAL was going to have the entire afternoon shift (sked, dispatch, ops control) report to Chicago Res to test its systems that day - instead, the morning shift did; there was a fire in the network cabling underneath the SOC floor due to renovation work being completed; all the network cabling had to be replaced, and the usual SOC was out of action for 2-3 months.

I remember reading in the Chicago tribune that UAL had to cancel only 4-5 flights due to the fire, and the transition of everyone to the backup ops control center.

 

[Hovernut]

My wife's a dba and she said that there is no disaster recovery plan in place. If there was this could not happen. I know I sound like Cartman here but That's what my mom...er... wife says.

She's exactly right! Any reputable company that's this dependent on IT should have a reliable DRP in place!! The only thing is SBS is so old, there may not be hardware readily available to run a mirror.

 

[Ben Dover]

Ding a ling a ling: "Hello, thank you for calling ABC Credit Union"

Me: "Uhh, I made a $2,000 deposit in my checking account yesterday, and now it doesn't show up in my account balance."

Credit Union: "Ya, uhh, we have a computer problem and all of the transactions made in the last day have been cancelled."

Me: "Soooo, where's my money?"

Credit Union: "Uh, we don't have a record of your deposit..."

The Point: There is no excuse for a computer problem on the scale such as this. (well, unless it was an EMP gun)

 

[surplus1]

Well I know at NWA we would still be flying .More than once I'v been released over the phone with the computer down and as for crew tracking they would do it by hand.Crew times ,that's why you need a small log book for day to day stuff.

I wouldn't bet much on that assumption. If it were true, how does NWA manage to "lose" for months something as large as a DC-10 when all your computers are working?

Perhaps you have a "mirror" system backup like UAL. If you do that's great; if you don't, to imply than you can keep NWA flying with hand tracking and chewing gum is bogus simplistic (BS).

We don't have a "mirror" and we should; that's a bad. However, this was far more than a "computer glitch" and did not affect just the crew scheduling system.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; don't spread it.

 

[Rogue5]

So, SkyWest lost Cat II for a few days and the General suggested we should be replaced, sending half our pilots out on the street. I can only imagine what he will find as an appropriate penalty for his CMR brethren after two days of cancelled flights...

Perhaps ritual suicide on the steps of Delta's HDQ with the last pilots arranging the bodies in the shape of the Delta triangle while using their own blood to scrawl the words "Thank you, oh great ones, for the honor while it lasted..." on the concrerte?

 

[English]

I can garantee that if any other airline's Crew Tracking software went T.U. they'd be grounded too.

I just found out today that my airline doesn't use crew tracking software. We are ALL PAPER.

 

[skywav8r]

Bump.......

 

[embdrvr]

I bet he lacks the gonads to answer this thread.

 

[bvt1151]

There isn't a paper system anywhere that would be able to take over under the same circumstances. The paper system assumes that you know where your planes and crews are in normal operations. Its as simple as looking at the schedule and going from there. Most crews don't even have to deal with crew scheduling because they just complete the trip they were on.

Comair was already spread out all over the country, and when the SBS went down, there was absolutely no way to know who was where. They couldn't use the schedule, like the original backup calls for, because the schedule went out the window long before the SBS crash. The only way they could quickly take stock of where their crewmembers were, was to contact hotels for the list of crewmembers there, compare that to their list of aircraft, and totally rebuild the schedule by hand. Its amazing by any standards that they were able to get the 150+ flights in the air that first day.

So what about a computer backup system? To be honest, I don't know what backup, or if a computer backup even exists at Comair, but it would have been useless in this situation. Unfortunately the only available backup is an SBS slave of the same system. Since both systems take the same input, the 32768 limit would have been reached on both systems simultaneously. If they had a superior system as a backup, it would have been the main system, and SBS would have been the backup, so that can be tossed out as a possibility. Granted there was some sort of backup of the current trips, which is what allowed them to come back at all before the 1st, but I'm sure with all the Jeppessen techs working 24-7, it took a bit more than "ctrl-alt-del."

The SABRE system has already been purchased, and they were already training employees on its use, with an originally scheduled release of mid-2005. In all risk assessments, the transition to the SABRE system is infinitely riskier than sticking with the SBS through the holiday season. There are a lot of people with 20/20 hindsight vision who say this could have easily been avoided, but they would have been saying the same thing if the transition to the SABRE system went bad.

 

[General Lee]

embdrvr,


What? I don't have what? Yeah, ok..... I think krap happens sometimes. Every airline has it's foul ups. I was just wondering what the reliabilty factor was with some of these regionals. This was a lousy time to have reliabilty problems, and both Skywest and Comair had them within a couple weeks or right on XMAS. That $ucked for us. Why? Because we are left with the bill. But, I don't want anyone to get hurt or crash, but I am allowed to say it "$ucked." If you have a problem with something Delta did, then feel free to post it. Good enough? Good night!



Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[Rogue5]

No one has any problem with what Delta did, or even what happened to Comair. I think the point of the post and the responses that followed was that we had a problem with YOU General and your dozen-odd posts raking SkyWest over the coals for an OEM supplier malfunction, safety-of-flight, better to be safe than kill passengers issue, and then when Comair doesn't fly for TWO DAYS: not one word.

Why? You posted on the majors board you were following the whole thing and checked up on flightinfo as the whole thing progressed. Could it be you've been noticably absent here because Comair is OWNED by Delta and therefore the buck stops at YOUR company for a lack of preparation (Glycol and software) that cost you WAY more than the bloody murder you accused us of, and suggested we lose our code-share for?

Frankly, I was happier when you had your tail between your legs and were too ashamed to post here for a few days...

 

[embdrvr]

General Lee,

You stated that SkyWest should be replaced by XJet because of the temporary loss of Cat 2 capability. What should be done about Comair?

 

[ArcticFlier]

You're wasting your time.............

General Lee,

You stated that SkyWest should be replaced by XJet because of the temporary loss of Cat 2 capability. What should be done about Comair?

^whistling^.......and pi$$ing in the wind.............


AF

 

[General Lee]

Rogue5,


I was flying planes those few days. Sorry to dissapoint you. I am not afraid to say anything on this board, obviously. It is called an opinion. Skywest is a good airline, but, like many airlines out there, has problems that some people, like yourself, cannot really see. Delta has plenty also. You are the one who seems to have a thin skin. Your RJ pay debacle set the regional airline pay scales back 20 years, accepting 50 seat wages for planes up to 99 seats. That was ridiculous. Then your Cat 2 loss, even temporarily, hurt Delta in the pocket book. Sure, I believe safety first, but it wasn't a great situation. Did I slam your pilots on that one? No. The reliability issue is important. Please learn how to take constructive criticism----or be able to decipher when an opinion is made. Feel free to make your own also.


Embrdrvr,

Comair can now do Cat2's, right? I didn't say park the Skywest fleet and furlough everyone, I said maybe Expressjet could fill in part time during the foggy winter months in SLC. That was said in jest....or was it? Relax pal, I am sure we have plenty of reliabilty issues ourselves.


AF,

You are cool.....but don't pi$$ in the wind---it can be messy.


Time for a long 4 day.


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[doh]

bvt1151,

I am a Comair pilot. The sbs should have been replaced years ago! There is no excuse for this debacle!!! NONE!!! This management has been totally awol for a long time on this. Kermit should lose his job for sure! And Randy should be pounding sand as well! That won't happen but this BS about a mid 2005 launch for sabre is no excuse! The union has been warning management about this system for at least 7 years and they have done nothing! Fry the BA$TARDS, I say! !

 

[embdrvr]

Your RJ pay debacle set the regional airline pay scales back 20 years,

I wonder how many years back the recent DAL concessions would take you. About 20? Yeah I thought so.

 

[P38JLightning]

apples to...whatever?

Originally Posted by General Lee
Your RJ pay debacle set the regional airline pay scales back 20 years,



>>>>I wonder how many years back the recent DAL concessions would take you. About 20? Yeah I thought so.


Not even close. Delta was in a potential bankrupt position and had they not given the cuts they did (except allowing whore airlines to operate the E170 with a first class at cancerous rates for the entire profession just to pay for their own growth) they would have had to sit in front of an antilabor (most likely) judge and would have lost a lot more.

SkyWest, on the other hand, is an insanely profitable company. What are your cash reserves? 750M? Raking in 20-40M a quarter are you? So soon you will have more than a billion in cash, growing like a weed anyway, and you give pay cuts and beg management to fly 99 seats and under for less than comair's 40 and 50 seat rates (and yes there would have been a lower 40 seat CRJ rate had we not gone on strike).

You guys (and others) simply are willing to pay for your own growth and flight time and upgrade. But I guess since Captains make more than FOs you personaly will make it up in the long run, so it was just a bidness decision, right?