10 ms·

This is probably another recent example where a system that operates with very little slack can have massive failures due to localized perturbations in network

This is probably another recent example where a system that operates with very little slack can have massive failures due to localized perturbations in network dynamics.

dehrmann 5y ago
That's fine. Southwest is more targeted at leisure travel, so they can get away with this. The legacy carriers have somewhat more resilient networks.
andrewflnr 5y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: we need a global reckoning on the tradeoff between efficiency and resilience.
- ironSkillet 5y ago
  The problem is that capitalism (as it is currently configured) strongly incentivizes short term efficiency. Very few organizations plan for long tail events because it almost inevitably hurts short term expected value, even though long term expected value would potentially benefit.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Supply chain resilience is incredibly expensive insurance for very rare and relatively short term disruptive events. Covid for instance is going to put things out of whack for two or three years, but is preventing that worth paying up for the redundancy and contingency plans over the previous 100 years? Probably not. Over the long term, efficiency wins out.
  - speedybird 5y ago
    > We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Not really, no. We can probably count on more resilient products being more expensive, but we can't count on more expensive products being more resilient. It doesn't work that way. There is really no way for an average consumer to know which expensive products are expensive because they are sold by resilient companies, and which are expensive for innumerable other reasons. Most purchases are made by people who lack the knowledge, experience or training that would be required to evaluate the resilience of a business. Voting for something without knowledge about that something is farcical. Ultimately this "voting" is little more than rhetoric used to push the blame onto those with the least insight into how the system works.
    - dantheman 5y ago
      There is a clear difference between airlines like Delta, Air France, etc and value airlines like ryan air, jetblue, southwest.
      - speedybird 5y ago
        Delta is the airline that abandoned me for 40 hours in ATL of all places, while Southwest has never let me down. If you had asked me a week ago which of the two was more reliable, I would have told you Southwest and I would have meant it absolutely. How would you have me judge them? I don't know anything about how to run an airline and I wouldn't even know where to start if you asked me to look up which of the two had a more resilient business model. You can't really expect any random air traveler to have an opinion on airlines better informed than their personal experiences. I think most people would struggle to tell you something so basic as what sort of plane they were even sitting in.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    > We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. This is actually not true. As a consumer my choices are constrained by retailers and suppliers (and government due to regulations). They choose based on price what to offer. If all retailers in my area don't want to supply organic food, I can't buy it. So I have limited power to alter the market. For extremely bad options, there's the choice not to buy, but for necessities, that option is precluded. Which is why a healthcare "free market" (hint: it's anything but free right now) is a chimera: when you or your family is dying or suffering, you are willing to pay "value based pricing". The real solution is to delink the "global" supply chain and build up local options. Resilience also increases jobs and tax base, but reduces megacorp profits. Since we actually live in an oligarchy, profits are all that are chased.
    - Fricken 5y ago
      Your vote has limited power to alter the market because it's just one vote. America chose Wal-Mart over Main Street. It's tragic, but that's what American consumers chose.
      - r00fus 5y ago
        Amusing how the point is missed again. I wouldn't blame consumers for consolidation on the supplier side through unethical practices. Or perhaps unrestrained capitalism will always result in these conditions?
        Fricken 5y ago
        I don't know if you recall the 90s, when WalMart was on a rampage, but there was considerable local resistance all over the place from groups who understood the hazards. The opportunity to be informed was there.
        dwiel 5y ago
        There should be a name for the fallacy of expecting people to "vote" with their dollars on every single issue all of the time. It's like the opposite mistake that communists make. They expect a single centralized decision maker to balance all considerations to set a price, which is inevitably ineffective. This vote with your dollar argument expects every individual to balance all considerations to set their own personal price. There is an assumption of information symmetry and unlimited ability to analyze on the part of the individuals behind the vote with your feet argument that is just not remotely true.
- refurb 5y ago
  Why? Who wants to pay for a 50% buffer that gets used 1 or 2 times per decade? Seems like a better option is what we have - multiple airline who run on different systems. SWA goes down so travelers book on another airline.
- 09bjb 5y ago
  You may be right, but airlines are either the canary in the coal mine or an exceptional case. They operate on incredibly, incredibly small margins so vulnerability to small disturbances is, at least in this industry, totally expected. I.e. not necessarily true for other trade sectors.
  - akersten 5y ago
    > They operate on incredibly, incredibly small margins I've never understood how an industry so hard for competition to get into, so defensively positioned with regulatory capture, and so overpriced and gouge-happy from a consumer PoV, can somehow manage to be barely scraping by. What is going on at the airlines where they seemingly can't make ends meet despite a silver platter cornered market?
    - asdfadsfgfdda 5y ago
      The real answer is: look at their workforce. Their workforce has all the power in negotiating. https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines
    - bittercynic 5y ago
      When I need to fly somewhere I look around and choose the cheapest way. Maybe they really are pinched and can't raise prices without loosing too many customers.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        I uses to do that, but now I realize I'm willing to pay for legroom. I still look for low cost, but only after factoring in the legroom.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      They have been underpricing themselves to maintain position against other companies. Regulations keep costs increasing. Unions keeps labor prices increasing. Did you expect your $200-300 cross-country flight to really give much of a profit to airlines after airport taxes, landing fees, fuel, maintance costs plus labor, insurances and everything else? Those flights should cost 10x as much if you want the golden treatment fliers received in the 60s.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > we need a global reckoning on the tradeoff between efficiency and resilience Why? Southwest operates on a thin operating margin. It passes that cost saving (and risk) on to its customers. If someone needs high certainty, there are other providers (and other fare classes), but you'll be paying up for that service and redundancy. If we were talking about base utilities, I'd get the argument. But passenger airlines?
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    It would be nice if there was some way of educating the consumer. But even if you did let people know that the Delta flight is $60 more and has a 40% less chance of being cancelled, people would still go with southwest.
    - ivalm 5y ago
      Because for most consumers $60 is more valuable that 1% vs 0.6% cancellation rate [0], as it matters only once in 250 flights, which for an individual effectively means never. [0] numbers pulled from thin air but consistent with your 40%.
      - rsj_hn 5y ago
        It's not just the rate of exceptional events, but what happens when the exceptional event occurs. 1. Miss your flight? They will try to book you on another. That's why load factor is important -- to find that extra seat. Low cost airlines have higher load factors (more efficient) so they are less able to accomodate you. 2. Bigger problem? There are reciprocity agreements to fly with a different airline. Low cost airlines don't have the same coverage, so again less able to accomodate you. It's just a general principle of efficiency versus robustness. With the low cost airline you are choosing the more efficient/less robust option. So when something goes wrong, it will be more painful. That extra pain is more important than differences in the rate that things go wrong. Other perks, like more value to frequent flyer miles, availability of first class, being able to pick your seat, etc, also play a role.
- jareklupinski 5y ago
  projects involving high risk and liability include a Factor of Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_of_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_of_safety i believe they did their calculus here though, and as long as the cost/benefit of this once-in-10-years event is amortized across 10 years...
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  This problem comes up a lot in my conversations with folks IRL. Everything is JIT to JIT. So fragile. It's almost like there is an underlying principle between efficiency and resilience but I've failed to find anything on it online.
  - andrewflnr 5y ago
    The best phrasing I've heard is something like this: the more closely adapted a system is to one environment, the less adapted it can be to other environments. So by being very closely adapted to the steady state environment, it cannot be adapted to disrupted environments.
    - TrispusAttucks 5y ago
      Thank you. This is some great insight. I remnds me that humans are a generalist species but as we further create a specialist environment we inherit the [1] instability in specialization. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalist_and_specialist_species https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalist_and_specialist_sp...

This is probably another recent example where a system that operates with very little slack can have massive failures due to localized perturbations in network dynamics.

dehrmann 5y ago

That's fine. Southwest is more targeted at leisure travel, so they can get away with this. The legacy carriers have somewhat more resilient networks.

andrewflnr 5y ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we need a global reckoning on the tradeoff between efficiency and resilience.

ironSkillet 5y ago
The problem is that capitalism (as it is currently configured) strongly incentivizes short term efficiency. Very few organizations plan for long tail events because it almost inevitably hurts short term expected value, even though long term expected value would potentially benefit.
missedthecue 5y ago
We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Supply chain resilience is incredibly expensive insurance for very rare and relatively short term disruptive events. Covid for instance is going to put things out of whack for two or three years, but is preventing that worth paying up for the redundancy and contingency plans over the previous 100 years? Probably not. Over the long term, efficiency wins out.
- speedybird 5y ago
  > We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. Not really, no. We can probably count on more resilient products being more expensive, but we can't count on more expensive products being more resilient. It doesn't work that way. There is really no way for an average consumer to know which expensive products are expensive because they are sold by resilient companies, and which are expensive for innumerable other reasons. Most purchases are made by people who lack the knowledge, experience or training that would be required to evaluate the resilience of a business. Voting for something without knowledge about that something is farcical. Ultimately this "voting" is little more than rhetoric used to push the blame onto those with the least insight into how the system works.
  - dantheman 5y ago
    There is a clear difference between airlines like Delta, Air France, etc and value airlines like ryan air, jetblue, southwest.
    - speedybird 5y ago
      Delta is the airline that abandoned me for 40 hours in ATL of all places, while Southwest has never let me down. If you had asked me a week ago which of the two was more reliable, I would have told you Southwest and I would have meant it absolutely. How would you have me judge them? I don't know anything about how to run an airline and I wouldn't even know where to start if you asked me to look up which of the two had a more resilient business model. You can't really expect any random air traveler to have an opinion on airlines better informed than their personal experiences. I think most people would struggle to tell you something so basic as what sort of plane they were even sitting in.
- r00fus 5y ago
  > We vote for the one we prefer every time we buy something. This is actually not true. As a consumer my choices are constrained by retailers and suppliers (and government due to regulations). They choose based on price what to offer. If all retailers in my area don't want to supply organic food, I can't buy it. So I have limited power to alter the market. For extremely bad options, there's the choice not to buy, but for necessities, that option is precluded. Which is why a healthcare "free market" (hint: it's anything but free right now) is a chimera: when you or your family is dying or suffering, you are willing to pay "value based pricing". The real solution is to delink the "global" supply chain and build up local options. Resilience also increases jobs and tax base, but reduces megacorp profits. Since we actually live in an oligarchy, profits are all that are chased.
  - Fricken 5y ago
    Your vote has limited power to alter the market because it's just one vote. America chose Wal-Mart over Main Street. It's tragic, but that's what American consumers chose.
    - r00fus 5y ago
      Amusing how the point is missed again. I wouldn't blame consumers for consolidation on the supplier side through unethical practices. Or perhaps unrestrained capitalism will always result in these conditions?
      - Fricken 5y ago
        I don't know if you recall the 90s, when WalMart was on a rampage, but there was considerable local resistance all over the place from groups who understood the hazards. The opportunity to be informed was there.
        dwiel 5y ago
        There should be a name for the fallacy of expecting people to "vote" with their dollars on every single issue all of the time. It's like the opposite mistake that communists make. They expect a single centralized decision maker to balance all considerations to set a price, which is inevitably ineffective. This vote with your dollar argument expects every individual to balance all considerations to set their own personal price. There is an assumption of information symmetry and unlimited ability to analyze on the part of the individuals behind the vote with your feet argument that is just not remotely true.
refurb 5y ago
Why? Who wants to pay for a 50% buffer that gets used 1 or 2 times per decade? Seems like a better option is what we have - multiple airline who run on different systems. SWA goes down so travelers book on another airline.
09bjb 5y ago
You may be right, but airlines are either the canary in the coal mine or an exceptional case. They operate on incredibly, incredibly small margins so vulnerability to small disturbances is, at least in this industry, totally expected. I.e. not necessarily true for other trade sectors.
- akersten 5y ago
  > They operate on incredibly, incredibly small margins I've never understood how an industry so hard for competition to get into, so defensively positioned with regulatory capture, and so overpriced and gouge-happy from a consumer PoV, can somehow manage to be barely scraping by. What is going on at the airlines where they seemingly can't make ends meet despite a silver platter cornered market?
  - asdfadsfgfdda 5y ago
    The real answer is: look at their workforce. Their workforce has all the power in negotiating. https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines
  - bittercynic 5y ago
    When I need to fly somewhere I look around and choose the cheapest way. Maybe they really are pinched and can't raise prices without loosing too many customers.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I uses to do that, but now I realize I'm willing to pay for legroom. I still look for low cost, but only after factoring in the legroom.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    They have been underpricing themselves to maintain position against other companies. Regulations keep costs increasing. Unions keeps labor prices increasing. Did you expect your $200-300 cross-country flight to really give much of a profit to airlines after airport taxes, landing fees, fuel, maintance costs plus labor, insurances and everything else? Those flights should cost 10x as much if you want the golden treatment fliers received in the 60s.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> we need a global reckoning on the tradeoff between efficiency and resilience Why? Southwest operates on a thin operating margin. It passes that cost saving (and risk) on to its customers. If someone needs high certainty, there are other providers (and other fare classes), but you'll be paying up for that service and redundancy. If we were talking about base utilities, I'd get the argument. But passenger airlines?
- gitfan86 5y ago
  It would be nice if there was some way of educating the consumer. But even if you did let people know that the Delta flight is $60 more and has a 40% less chance of being cancelled, people would still go with southwest.
  - ivalm 5y ago
    Because for most consumers $60 is more valuable that 1% vs 0.6% cancellation rate [0], as it matters only once in 250 flights, which for an individual effectively means never. [0] numbers pulled from thin air but consistent with your 40%.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      It's not just the rate of exceptional events, but what happens when the exceptional event occurs. 1. Miss your flight? They will try to book you on another. That's why load factor is important -- to find that extra seat. Low cost airlines have higher load factors (more efficient) so they are less able to accomodate you. 2. Bigger problem? There are reciprocity agreements to fly with a different airline. Low cost airlines don't have the same coverage, so again less able to accomodate you. It's just a general principle of efficiency versus robustness. With the low cost airline you are choosing the more efficient/less robust option. So when something goes wrong, it will be more painful. That extra pain is more important than differences in the rate that things go wrong. Other perks, like more value to frequent flyer miles, availability of first class, being able to pick your seat, etc, also play a role.
jareklupinski 5y ago
projects involving high risk and liability include a Factor of Safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_of_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_of_safety i believe they did their calculus here though, and as long as the cost/benefit of this once-in-10-years event is amortized across 10 years...
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
This problem comes up a lot in my conversations with folks IRL. Everything is JIT to JIT. So fragile. It's almost like there is an underlying principle between efficiency and resilience but I've failed to find anything on it online.
- andrewflnr 5y ago
  The best phrasing I've heard is something like this: the more closely adapted a system is to one environment, the less adapted it can be to other environments. So by being very closely adapted to the steady state environment, it cannot be adapted to disrupted environments.
  - TrispusAttucks 5y ago
    Thank you. This is some great insight. I remnds me that humans are a generalist species but as we further create a specialist environment we inherit the [1] instability in specialization. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalist_and_specialist_species https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalist_and_specialist_sp...