RE: Interesting article...

Steve,

I read through the higher rated posts.  Here's some quotes from an anonymous 
Comair employee...
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134005&cid=11189578
or http://tinyurl.com/8fly3
"This very same software package is used by many other airlines, including the 
two I worked for before coming to Comair. I don't know if their systems have 
the same hard-coded limit that ours does or not."

"As of 10:00 pm on 12/24, that limit was reached. Crew Scheduling was unable to 
create any new pairings, unable to track who would be flying what airplane to 
where, and basically unable to keep the airline flying at that point."

"A major part of the problem is Comair's concentration in Cincinnati. CVG is 
our only crew base, and it is the largest single crew base of any airline in 
the world. Over 1800 pilots and 1100 flight attendants in one base. Not even 
any of the majors have a single base that large. Several of our software 
packages are woefully inadequate, and replacements have been sought for some 
time."

"Jan. 1 starts a new month, and the system will return to full functionality 
then. Until that date, however, our operations will be very limited."

Now I did find this quote in the thread started by the post above, I assume it 
is the same anonymous person: 
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134005&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&tid=128&tid=126&mode=thread&pid=11201438
or http://tinyurl.com/bd9zt
"they were notified of this. It was in the Y2K report that was given to them 
August 1999, by an risk analysis contractor which they paid for."

However, the post doesn't make it clear what "this" is.  Just a mention of the 
limitation, or a full in depth breakdown on what would happen if the system 
ever hit the limit.

Some other quotes from the CIO article...
"All in all, there seemed to be no hurry on either Comair or Delta's part to 
get the project rolling, even though the crew scheduling system was (and still 
is) the oldest application of its kind still running at a regional carrier, 
according to a recent survey by Regional Aviation News."

Taken together, it seems unlikely that anybody else had ever actually run into 
this particular limit.  More evidence would be the lack of any similar stories 
in the past.  I'd imagine that an airline shutting down for days would have 
made the news.




Charles Wilt
iSeries Systems Administrator / Developer
Mitsubishi Electric Automotive America
ph: 513-573-4343
fax: 513-398-1121
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Steve Richter
> Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 10:56 AM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: Re: Interesting article...
> 
> 
> 
> I haven't either Charles. I am guessing on all of this, but based on
> my experience, what we all have learned in our careers, users and
> programmers become specialized in packages.   Comair was using a
> package for their crew scheduling system.  So it has to be that those
> specialists were aware of the parameters of the package.  The fact
> that management does not listen to the specialist is not surprising -
> but it just focuses the blame where it should be - the DP managers.
> 
> -Steve
>