Question for Comair folks...

[Slim]

Here are some facts which support the comments of Surplus1 and others...

1. I was working 22-24 December. I was one of the fortunate few to get home on the 24th. It was a result of staying put and being proactive rather than reactive (that probably comes from my military time.).

2. While in CVG on the 22nd, it took two hours to get from the gate to the deice pads. My flight to ORF blocked at 4:01. Scheduled block time was 1:25. Does this give anyone here an idea of the weather intensity when the storm hit? It's no wonder glycol supplies were depleted so rapidly.

3. In BOS, 24 December, we couldn't contact scheduling to confirm our schedule beyond our first flight. However, dispatch was sending releases and my crew was scheduled to go to RDU. So, we went. Upon arrival in RDU, the release showed us going back to BOS. So we went to BOS.

4. In BOS, rather than scatter to the winds as some did, we were persistently trying to contact scheduling. We finally got through and were scheduled to DH on DL back to CVG. That flight cancelled. Scheduling was planning to junior man us into Christmas in BOS. While discussing our options, a crew came into Ops looking for their airplane to reposition back to CVG. God works in mysterious ways! We called scheduling (three different people calling three different numbers!) and scheduled ourselves on the ferry flight. With scheduling's knowledge and concurrence, we returned to CVG.

One thing I noticed over the past few days is scheduling seems to rely a lot on EPIC, an internet information service for Comair employees, to "notify" crews of changes in schedules. Unfortunately, we crew members seem to perpetuate that practice. It's a convenience which scheduling seems to think every crew member has 24 hour access to. If our hotel didn't have Internet access for its guests, we would have been in limbo. I don't carry a laptop computer anymore, following my retirment from the National Guard.

My wife, a former computer programmer, noticed SBS has a limit of 32,000 monthly transactions. Since it's a five digit limitation, she questioned why the limit isn't 99,999!

The next few weeks and months should be very interesting!

Fly safe!

 

[chperplt]

Ben

Very few flights left CVG on the 22nd and not many more on the 23rd. This is Comair, Delta, US Express, CO Express and United Express included.

I sat in the back of a DL flight trying to DH for nearly 4 hours before returning to the gate and CX the flight. Airplanes couldn't be deiced. When they finished and did an inspection, they had to start over.. I haven't seen freezing rain that bad in a long time.

 

[Snoopy58]

My wife, a former computer programmer, noticed SBS has a limit of 32,000 monthly transactions. Since it's a five digit limitation, she questioned why the limit isn't 99,999!

Because computers don't work in decimal as their native language. Ask her how many digits 32k is in binary.

 

[surplus1]

Guess who's not getting any new a/c? RJET gets contract for 170's. DL putting pressure on Comair to reduce costs in line with other outsourced carriers. Is the word out that Comair will slowly shrink into oblivion over the next 5 years?

RJET's EMB 170 contract has nothing to do with Comair's operating costs, and everything to do with Delta's lack of capital. When you need a little and the wife you married is pregnant, you turn to the local hooker, especially when she's haveing a sale on spread legs and likes the color of your wheels. You might get an STD but you gamble anyway.

It wouldn't take much for some unhappy middle or upper mgt type that is computer savy to sabotage a system he or she knows can fail very easy. Bring in the FBI.

Source considered; reply unnecessary.

 

[SWA/FO]

yeah, ask her that!

 

[lowecur]

RJET's EMB 170 contract has nothing to do with Comair's operating costs, and everything to do with Delta's lack of capital. What a silly remark. GE is lending DL $500M, and you think they would have a problem leasing them 170's? Leasing can be arranged with no up-front costs. It's just DCI w/o is too expensive to operate. GE is supposed to lend UAIR $180M plus lease them 31 E-jets if certain caveats are met by 1/15/05. Plain and simple Surplus, Comair & ASA aren't getting anything until they can come close to matching RJET in costs. In fact it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they sold off all of their owned CRJ's to SKYW. I see SKYW has been picking some up from FLYI. I know SKYW wants that UAX deal. When you need a little and the wife you married is pregnant, you turn to the local hooker, especially when she's haveing a sale on spread legs and likes the color of your wheels. You might get an STD but you gamble anyway.

If your assumption is true, then once DL gets pension relief (one form or another in early 2005), then DL will have made most of the changes necessary to be viable for the future, and get complete access to the credit markets. When that happens, I still say DCI gets zero without concessions.

 

[LarryinTN]

The limit of an 8-bit integer is 32,767. Include zero and you can track 32,768 changes with an 8-bit integer index.

 

[DaveJ]

Uh, I think you mean 16 bit. The max unsigned number for an 8 bit integer is 256 (127 signed). Its 32768 (65736 unsigned) for 16 bit integers.

 

[Oakum_Boy]

ASA and Comair are running on fumes. It was only a matter of time before this happened. Mainline people must realize that no regional subsidiary receives as much support and attention as you do. There is little to zero support for us crews. WE ARE ON OUR OWN.

Whether it be dispatch, maintenance control, or whatever. These airlines are staffed by morons. The flight crew are the only way these disasters continue to operate. Pilots may not be as experienced as those at mainline, but we are certainly experienced with the daily cluster/goat rope that is reality for anyone working for a regional airline.The bottom line is that we are a low-cost mainline alternative, with crappy service, late departures and dirty cabins.

You can't blame pilots for heading home. There is no nobility in sticking it out when management continues to treat us like dirt. I would have been out of there for sure. I remember one Delta Captain who was convinced that we used their dispatch. Yeah, I wish...

 

[Slug]

OK, post 47 and 48 hurt my head.


Slug

 

[Slim]

Slug,

Those responses (47 and 48) had to be translated into English for me. According to my wife, if the language is FORTRAN, the 32,000 transaction limitation makes more sense.

Here's to no more headaches!

Fly safe!

 

[FlyComAirJets]

Freaking FORTRAN

FORTRAN, FORmula TRANslation. Learned it in college a gazillion years ago on a computer the size of twenty Buicks. Used a keypunch to hole IBM cards that fed into a hopper that was "read" into the machine and then compiled. Any fatal errors and it was back to the beginning.

Stone age technology, reminds me of one of those BC cartoon characters chiseling into a stone tablet.

 

[freightdogfred]

What reg is that? The 24 hours off evern seven days can be spent in a hotel, as far as the regs are concerned.

Mebbe in the freightdog world..... 1 in 7 for sked service means at base, free of duty..

 

[DaveJ]

OK, one more try. By the way, the computer language used makes no diference at all. Doesn't matter if it's FORTRAN, C, Basic, or assembly language. The issue is whether the programmer wrote the program to correctly handle arithmetic overflow errors.

Computers use binary arithmetic. All digits are 1s and 0s. An integer number can be signed or unsigned (unsigned means positive numbers only, signed numbers can be positive or negative).

Computers process data in chunks of bits.
A byte is 8 bits which can represent 0 to 256 (unsigned) or -127 to 127 (signed).
A word is 16 bits which can represent 0 to 65536 (unsigned) or -32767 to 32767 (signed)
A longword is 32 bits which can represent 0 to 4294967295 (unsigned) or -2147483647 to 2147483647 (signed).

So it looks like the program Comair was using was tracking change events with a 16 bit signed integer value. The number of changes hit the limit (32767) and then went 1 over. Whenever that happens, the positive number now overflows to a negative number and the computer throws a numeric overflow exception. If the programmer who wrote the program never anticipated that an overflow would happen, he probably did not code for the event and the program crashed (apparently without saving any data).

 

[surplus1]

For the computer experts:

The program(s) that failed is 1970's technology written mostly in 80 column FORTRAN. They run on an IBM server with AIX Unix.

I really can't say much more than that.

 

[chperplt]

USA today is running an article that says Comair will have the software replaces within a few months. The article seems to place blame on Delta because of the low IT budget it has allocated.

We're back to 100% today and all will be right with the world... unless GL or 737 have anything to say about it!

 

[surplus1]

Oakum Boy,

I'm curious. Where do you work?

 

[surplus1]

I still say DCI gets zero without concessions.

Apparently you don't even know what "DCI" consists of. So much for the credibility of your remarks.

 

[lowecur]

Apparently you don't even know what "DCI" consists of. So much for the credibility of your remarks.

Weak reply. Did you read my reply where I mentioned DCI w/o? Try sticking to the topic.

 

[737 Pylt]

Whether it be dispatch, maintenance control, or whatever. These airlines are staffed by morons.

To a certain extent you're right. You get what you pay for. If the airline is going to pay $5/hr schedulers, then these kinds of screw ups are going to happen, no matter what company you work for!
737