A ‘catastrophic’ computer outage is crippling international air travel

Washington Post ^ | 27 May 2017 | Avi Selk

[Lorianne]

A catastrophic computer outage crippled one of the world’s busiest flight hubs on Saturday, forcing British Airways to cancel all flights out of two London airports, leaving terminals in chaos and passengers stranded.

“Today, we have experienced a major IT system failure that is causing very severe disruptions to our flight operations worldwide,” British Airways chief executive Alex Cruz said in a video message, as reports spread of errors on its website, ticket machines, baggage terminals and technical infrastructure.

Cruz wore a yellow safety vest as he spoke near Heathrow Airport — Europe’s busiest airport and major hub — where baggage piled on the floor and gate information had to be written on a whiteboard. British Airways canceled all departures at Heathrow and at nearby Gatwick Airport. Flights were supposed to resume Saturday evening, but the airline later announced that none of its planes would leave the airports before Sunday.

One passenger told the Associated Press she couldn’t transfer to another flight because “they can’t bring up our details.”

[RockyTx]

this story is just a pack of lies
made up by the BA marketing department.
......................

my advice to BA is...
next time, just pay the 300 bucks

[The Sons of Liberty]

On paper outsourcing IT always looks like a money saver, particularly in the short run which is all many CEOs are concerned with, but it only takes one incident, not even this big, to lose that so called savings. Often in situations where out sourcing is to a third world place like the Philippines, you can't even get anyone to take charge in a crisis. I've seen situations where a third party company had to be called in to recover the system - big bucks there.

Usually those being laid off in the out sourcing are expected to acquaint and train their replacements - you can guess the results.

[EVO X]

I work at a Fortune 100 company and we outsourced our IT help desk to India and Phillipines.

I've been retired a few years from IT support. Not sure what OEM manufacturers are doing now for tech support. At one point before I retired, business class machines were handled by US employees at a particular firm. If our users purchased consumer machines, tech support calls got routed to who knows where. It was maddening have to deal with the consumer machines most of the time.

[hold_muh_bier]

Long, ongoing discussion about this over at PPRuNe, with many aviation ‘insiders’ chiming in:

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/595169-ba-delays-lhr-computer-issue.html

[Moonman62]

The Model 100 firmware was the last Microsoft product that Bill Gates developed personally, along with Suzuki. According to Gates, “part of my nostalgia about this machine is this was the last machine where I wrote a very high percentage of the code in the product”.

[Pelham]

We Are The World....

[khelus]

“British Airways is down due to computer failures in its data center.

British Airways is no longer British, having been bought by a Spanish company.

Last year, the new CEO decided it would be a great cost-saving measure to outsource their IT to India. Right now, it really looks like having their IT people in India, when their physical data center is in England, may not have been the best idea.

Why a modern company has so little redundancy in its critical IT infrastructure, is yet to be explained. “

More cost-saving

[lightman]

Ping

[Jimmy Valentine]

Indications are that the person in charge of IT outsourced to thir world to save money.