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South West needed to update its tech infrastructure. They know this. Apparently staff have to call in to schedule and when things aren't going well it goes sou

South West needed to update its tech infrastructure. They know this. Apparently staff have to call in to schedule and when things aren't going well it goes south quickly. This business model is kinda what made southwest what it is today. I think like "just in time" manufacturing, it can save you money when its working but it might not be as fault tolerant. From a podcast transcript: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/podcasts/the-daily/the-southwest-airlines-meltdown.html?showTranscript=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/podcasts/the-daily/the-so... Niraj Chokshi: Right, exactly. There was this union official who told this story where there was a plane ready to go that was missing one flight attendant. And they had several on board already as passengers. But none of them could reach the headquarters quickly enough to tell them, look, we’ll work this flight. And so the flight ended up getting canceled. Michael Barbaro: Even though the flight attendants were on the plane. Niraj Chokshi: Right, exactly. And so this kind of thing was happening across the board. And the airline just could not keep up with the nature of the problem. Michael Barbaro: Because basically, they had an antiquated scheduling system. Niraj Chokshi: Right, right. And Southwest has acknowledged that, too, even before this crisis. After Thanksgiving, they invited a group of journalists to Dallas. And I was there. And the CEO was telling us about his goal of modernizing the operation. There are all these sorts of systems that they want to upgrade. They want to make better. And he mentioned this system. He said, we’ve got flight attendants who have to call in. This is a process that could be automated. And he said, it’s not OK. And so they knew. They had started to work on it. That’s what they say. But unfortunately, they were still working on it when Christmas comes.

toss1 4y ago
>>they had several on board already as passengers. But none of them could reach the headquarters quickly enough to tell them, look, we’ll work this flight. And so the flight ended up getting canceled. >>Michael Barbaro: Even though the flight attendants were on the plane. >>Niraj Chokshi: Right, exactly. And so this kind of thing was happening across the board. And the airline just could not keep up with the nature of the problem. Perhaps more importantly, they had provided no means to push decision-making to the edges of the system. This is apparently an absolutely critical difference between the armed forces of Ukraine and Russia, where UKR has updated to modern command & control pushing decision-making out as far into the field as possible, while RUS has very centralized C&C, so UKR can outfight them even though outnumbered 5:1, and both sides are running short of artillery. Here, SW, cannot even fix parts of their system when the fix is literally on the tarmac fully configured and loaded, just not centrally approved. They can't just say, we're good, every item on the checklist is verified, we're going, here's the data, we can update via communications en-route. I'd bet that such solutions exist within an hour of scheduled takeoff for more than 50% of the situations. Instead, it looks like they are 100% shutdown.

toss1 4y ago

>>they had several on board already as passengers. But none of them could reach the headquarters quickly enough to tell them, look, we’ll work this flight. And so the flight ended up getting canceled. >>Michael Barbaro: Even though the flight attendants were on the plane. >>Niraj Chokshi: Right, exactly. And so this kind of thing was happening across the board. And the airline just could not keep up with the nature of the problem. Perhaps more importantly, they had provided no means to push decision-making to the edges of the system. This is apparently an absolutely critical difference between the armed forces of Ukraine and Russia, where UKR has updated to modern command & control pushing decision-making out as far into the field as possible, while RUS has very centralized C&C, so UKR can outfight them even though outnumbered 5:1, and both sides are running short of artillery. Here, SW, cannot even fix parts of their system when the fix is literally on the tarmac fully configured and loaded, just not centrally approved. They can't just say, we're good, every item on the checklist is verified, we're going, here's the data, we can update via communications en-route. I'd bet that such solutions exist within an hour of scheduled takeoff for more than 50% of the situations. Instead, it looks like they are 100% shutdown.