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https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/zw5lsl/southwest_pilots_hows_it_going/j1tne9z/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/zw5lsl/southwest_pi..

by kart23 4y ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/zw5lsl/southwest_pilots_hows_it_going/j1tne9z/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/zw5lsl/southwest_pi... i believe this story. the scheduling system is too fragile and can’t automatically pick up disruptions to crew movement. they’re still manually scheduling some crews, but I think their main problem is they don’t have a way of knowing which crews are where and therefore can’t schedule flights. and it’s not every single piece that’s going to take 30 days, but it seems pretty likely that some bags will be lost that long.

raverbashing 4y ago
> the software for scheduling is woefully antiquated by at least 20 years. No app/internet options, all manual entry and it has settings that you DO NOT CHANGE for fear of crashing it. But hey it's cheaper if we don't change it right? /s (and I kinda can agree with this, like 10% because they might end contracting with some bigger IT company that doesn't care about shipping something that works)
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
  Replacing an airline scheduling system sounds insanely complex. So many moving pieces, tens of millions of physical entities to track per day: crew, passengers, planes, spare parts, luggage, crew maximum allowed shift schedules, open gates, interacting with domestic+international terminals, seat assignments, and so on. Edge cases on edge cases on edge cases developed over years, probably in some god awful language running on a mainframe somewhere before “best practices” were a thing. Modernizing such a system would take enormous political + real capital. The new system would undoubtedly have many growing pains as formerly resolved problems were not covered in the new system. It’s no surprise nobody would want to touch such a system.
  - jchanimal 4y ago
    One of the more tangible outcomes from my work on mobile sync is the United scheduling software. Seems like Southwest was too little too late on IT upgrades. https://www.couchbase.com/customers/united-airlines/ https://www.couchbase.com/customers/united-airlines/
    - apelapan 4y ago
      How is Couchbase in general and the mobile sync in particular relevant to United not having this disaster right now? I've worked with airline scheduling software at almost the scale of United (about half the size, for the largest customer). That was using an Oracle database, which was a bit of a pain and a big expense, but worked fine as long as there was competent admins and competent devs. Would Couchbase be disaster-proof even when run by clowns? Not saying there aren't better and worse choices for databases in any given situation. Just saying that there are lots of them that work perfectly well in competent hands.
      - jchanimal 4y ago
        Architecture advantages over the phone based system described upthread are obvious. The reason United chose Couchbase is because it’s designed for offline updates. So if a plane, phone, or airport is disconnected they can still do the data entry work and reconcile asynchronously.
        apelapan 4y ago
        But the Southwest system is not "phone-based" by design, I presume? They are going via phone because the decision support system for ops/crew control are down/unusable? If they've resorted to doing all their scheduling manually with pen and paper, any data pushed to the edge (air crews, ground staff etc) will need to be transmitted in a similarly manual fashion. The gate/ground/air crews are not making autonomous decisions about who is flying what, when and where. That is decided by some ops/crew control structure in the airline.
treis 4y ago
It's not just that. There's complex rules around how frequently crews can work flights and how much time off they need. Delays can cause ripple effects as an hour delay can make an expected available crew unavailable. Then you have a mismatch of available crews and planes and scheduled flights. It's one big thorny ball of spaghetti that even the best designed computer system will struggle to unwravel.
- eightysixfour 4y ago
  And to top it off, unions fight tooth and nail to make sure this type of information cannot be tracked, which keeps a lot of systems manual. I understand why the unions don't want the data to be captured, but it also makes it hard to optimize physical systems.
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    Do you have a source? Why would unions fight to keep data from being logged that would ensure that their members aren't overworked? If you're not logging all the working hours how can you even be sure everyone is being paid correctly?
    - eightysixfour 4y ago
      Sorry, wasn’t entirely clear on what data I was talking about. Unions fight to keep a lot of data from being automated instead of manual because the automated data can be used to build individual performance metrics. For example, some baggage handling unions fought against bag scanners because then you could tell how much work different union members did. They’re trying to keep from getting optimized to death like an Amazon warehouse worker. Unfortunately that same automated data is really useful for dealing with situations like this. Once the manually entered data is out of sync with the real world the errors compound and you have cascading failures.

by kart23 4y ago

raverbashing 4y ago

> the software for scheduling is woefully antiquated by at least 20 years. No app/internet options, all manual entry and it has settings that you DO NOT CHANGE for fear of crashing it. But hey it's cheaper if we don't change it right? /s (and I kinda can agree with this, like 10% because they might end contracting with some bigger IT company that doesn't care about shipping something that works)

0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
Replacing an airline scheduling system sounds insanely complex. So many moving pieces, tens of millions of physical entities to track per day: crew, passengers, planes, spare parts, luggage, crew maximum allowed shift schedules, open gates, interacting with domestic+international terminals, seat assignments, and so on. Edge cases on edge cases on edge cases developed over years, probably in some god awful language running on a mainframe somewhere before “best practices” were a thing. Modernizing such a system would take enormous political + real capital. The new system would undoubtedly have many growing pains as formerly resolved problems were not covered in the new system. It’s no surprise nobody would want to touch such a system.
- jchanimal 4y ago
  One of the more tangible outcomes from my work on mobile sync is the United scheduling software. Seems like Southwest was too little too late on IT upgrades. https://www.couchbase.com/customers/united-airlines/ https://www.couchbase.com/customers/united-airlines/
  - apelapan 4y ago
    How is Couchbase in general and the mobile sync in particular relevant to United not having this disaster right now? I've worked with airline scheduling software at almost the scale of United (about half the size, for the largest customer). That was using an Oracle database, which was a bit of a pain and a big expense, but worked fine as long as there was competent admins and competent devs. Would Couchbase be disaster-proof even when run by clowns? Not saying there aren't better and worse choices for databases in any given situation. Just saying that there are lots of them that work perfectly well in competent hands.
    - jchanimal 4y ago
      Architecture advantages over the phone based system described upthread are obvious. The reason United chose Couchbase is because it’s designed for offline updates. So if a plane, phone, or airport is disconnected they can still do the data entry work and reconcile asynchronously.
      - apelapan 4y ago
        But the Southwest system is not "phone-based" by design, I presume? They are going via phone because the decision support system for ops/crew control are down/unusable? If they've resorted to doing all their scheduling manually with pen and paper, any data pushed to the edge (air crews, ground staff etc) will need to be transmitted in a similarly manual fashion. The gate/ground/air crews are not making autonomous decisions about who is flying what, when and where. That is decided by some ops/crew control structure in the airline.

treis 4y ago

It's not just that. There's complex rules around how frequently crews can work flights and how much time off they need. Delays can cause ripple effects as an hour delay can make an expected available crew unavailable. Then you have a mismatch of available crews and planes and scheduled flights. It's one big thorny ball of spaghetti that even the best designed computer system will struggle to unwravel.

eightysixfour 4y ago
And to top it off, unions fight tooth and nail to make sure this type of information cannot be tracked, which keeps a lot of systems manual. I understand why the unions don't want the data to be captured, but it also makes it hard to optimize physical systems.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  Do you have a source? Why would unions fight to keep data from being logged that would ensure that their members aren't overworked? If you're not logging all the working hours how can you even be sure everyone is being paid correctly?
  - eightysixfour 4y ago
    Sorry, wasn’t entirely clear on what data I was talking about. Unions fight to keep a lot of data from being automated instead of manual because the automated data can be used to build individual performance metrics. For example, some baggage handling unions fought against bag scanners because then you could tell how much work different union members did. They’re trying to keep from getting optimized to death like an Amazon warehouse worker. Unfortunately that same automated data is really useful for dealing with situations like this. Once the manually entered data is out of sync with the real world the errors compound and you have cascading failures.