RE: Interesting article... -- MIDRANGE-L

I could be wrong but I thought I read somewhere when this happened that they
were on an older version of that package and that anyone else using it, had
upgraded thus no problems (?). Anyone else recall that ?

Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Wilt, Charles
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 12:32 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: 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.