Credit where credit is due. Well, sort of.
Frequent visitors to this site know what we feel obligated to help broadcast the many shortcomings of commercial air travel. But, we’re fair folks, too, and as such, we were pleased to find a past article in the New York Times that offered some encouraging news. American, JetBlue and United Airlines have all just recently upgraded the software used to, among other things, track and re-route flights due to bad weather conditions and other factors. It’s a long overdue upgrade, of course. To get a very clear sense of just how bad things had gotten, check out this excerpt from the article, entitled “Unclogging the Tarmac” by Jeff Bailey:
FORT WORTH — At any given moment, the airline industry’s powerful networks of computers are setting fares, tracking reservations and calculating how much fuel each plane needs to reach its destination.
So when a storm shut down Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport last Dec. 29, forcing American Airlines to divert 130 planes to other airports in the region, what high-tech system came into play at the world’s largest airline?
“A legal pad,” said Don Dillman, managing director of American’s operations center here, where dispatchers direct flights around the world.
Lacking any automated system for keeping track of all those diverted planes, Mr. Dillman and his colleagues furiously scribbled down details of where they had gone, how long they had sat there, and whether pilots had enough time left on their daily work limits to keep flying when the weather cleared.
The good news is that the new systems should help. But it doesn’t mean we’re standing atop our desk cheering (nor losing any enthusiasm for fractional jet ownership). It all feels a bit too little, too late. Here’s more from the article:
But, in another sense, the improvements are troubling because they reveal the industry’s relatively primitive approach to dealing with service disruptions.
“What took so long?” said Mark Mogel, a retired software engineer who was stranded for five hours on an American flight in 2001, and then recently joined with others who had been stranded to lobby Congress for a limit on tarmac waits.
The kinds of programs American and others are installing are neither terribly expensive nor “a great leap” in technology, and thus could have been in place years earlier, Mr. Mogel said.
Not stranding passengers “is just a matter of will,” he added.
Now they airlines claim that one of the reasons that more money was not invested in computer upgrades is because the change of focus to security (and lack of funds) post 9/11. Another excerpt:
And as American was preparing to make big investments in computers, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred, and sent the airline industry into a deep decline. Spending on technology was reduced. “That changed our investment profile from innovation to survival,” [American Airlines’ CIO] Mr. [Monte] Ford said.
Don’t know about you, but I get a bit tired of hearing about how 9/11 is to blame when I’m sitting (more like “trapped”) on a plane just sitting on the tarmac for hours.
Here’s hoping the software upgrades do help. My fingers are crossed, but I’m not betting on it.
