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The entire aviation industry feels like it is in need of a tech stack 100% rebuild. Systems like Sabre are 60+ years old.
by Havoc 2y ago
The entire aviation industry feels like it is in need of a tech stack 100% rebuild.
Systems like Sabre are 60+ years old.
- tengbretson 2y agoI don't disagree, but in 2024 where on earth could you staff large enough team to do such a task with developers that are self-disciplined enough to do it safely?
- gjsman-1000 2y agoHeck, where do you get developers who aren’t convinced it should be rewritten in JavaScript?
- toomuchtodo 2y agoA collaboration between the US Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy. Lots of solid engineering out of Oak Ridge, Argonne, Sandia Labs. Make it a system owned and operated by the FAA.
- FireBeyond 2y agoI'm sure every other country on earth will approve of that. This needs to come from IATA, not the FAA.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoI don’t have a strong opinion as to which org owns it, as long as it is a neutral non for profit party or other consortium arrangement. IATA did not immediately come to mind, so I appreciate the correction. Upvoted!
- tengbretson 2y ago> Lots of solid engineering out of Oak Ridge, Argonne, Sandia Labs. Researchers and academics are quite possibly the last people on earth I would ask to deliver safety-critical software.
- labster 2y agoResearchers and academics did pretty well on weather models, which are much more important to safety than aviation software, because you can’t just disable severe weather for a few days.
- wenc 2y agoWeather forecasting is a science problem. Flight codes -- and making sure they don't break systems -- is a software engineering problem. Different skillsets. I know folks who work at national labs. They have neither the skillset nor the interest to do this kind of work. (I am a researcher)
- alfalfasprout 2y agoStrongly agreed. What makes this hard is not something novel algorithmically or in squeezing the last little bit of performance out. It's the monumental effort of coordination across many, many entities running legacy software and doing so in a way that doesn't take down critical infrastructure in the process. It's very, very difficult but in a completely different way to building weather modeling systems.
- alfalfasprout 2y agoMore importantly, they wouldn't be able to pay for the talent to pull this off. Also, due to how government contracts work it would almost assuredly end up staffed by eg; Raytheon, Booz Allen, or some other contractor which would hire bottom of the barrel contractors, give them minimal resources, next to no flexibility in requirements, and pocket the money.
- gumby 2y agoEnormous path dependance. There's a photo in that article that shows the problem: the flip-tab sign that has space for four numerical digits. I was thinking they could just switch from 0-9 to 0-9A-Z but that photo showed why that would be a disaster. Plus any solution has to be approved for use worldwide. Fortunately the two-digit IATA codes have already switched to 0-9A-Z (e.g. JetBlue is B6) so allowing constrained airlines to use two codes should work fine.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- poopsmithe 2y agoHow many airports still have flip-tab signs? Do they need to stay? Aren't they adding to an already noisy area? What's their maintenance cost vs. a LCD? What's their energy consumption vs. a LCD?
- SoftTalker 2y ago[flagged]
- lotsoweiners 2y agoI do. I was just traveling about a month ago and the gate info had changed on the monitor but not on my phone and this was both ways. I always check the monitor and use that as the system of record over my phone.
- ricketyricky 2y agoI do. "The phone" is just another hassle one doesn't want to take care of on long-distance travel. Paper tickets just work, can't say that for the login for travel / rewards apps when you think you were already logged in when being offline.
- OJFord 2y agoSame problem on LCD/with the font you use though - those displays are dense, and designed around room for 'AB1234'. Confusing to have it scroll when it already rotates into some other information too.
- slightwinder 2y agoThe problem is more the airlines, IATA and everything else, not so much the reservations systems like Sabre. Those airlines are annoyingly ignorant with their IT, for whatever reason. Sabre&Co. are very active in updating their systems, they could probably any time lift the limitations.
- eep_social 2y agoBeen done. You need to put in $100 million to be considered serious and get across the table from someone at a carrier. Also helpful to have deep relationships with carriers based on software for other parts of their business. And then there’s always that risk that some idiotic exec will cancel the project to chase a half billion dollar market instead. I can’t recall where the system needed up being sold to but I’m sure it died an ugly death thereafter. Writing the core in lisp was a risky move.