Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights canceled or delayed

Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by soylentnewsorg on Monday October 11, 2021 @01:19AM (#28824948)

Decades-old does not mean duct-taped. It means every edge case has been hit, it's rock solid, and it works. There are many patches on top of patches, and the system is hard to comprehend for someone new. But it's a heck of a lot more stable that something redesigned.

The real issue here, is during bad weather and understaffed ATC, for some reason the airforce decided to do some training in airspace used by commercial flights. This military training part in the article is mentioned quickly, then completely ignored.

This was the US Military causing delays, cancellations, and people getting stuck overnight at airports. This was the US Military causing huge operational and financial issues for one of the most customer-friendly airlines out there. And the did this while eating up millions of dollars that are taken out of our paychecks - that they used to screw us. Time for congress to remove the funds that allowed them to conduct this training at a time when it caused problems for the general population paying their salaries.

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Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by creato on Monday October 11, 2021 @01:50AM (#28825153)

If the cause is the military, why is southwest so disproportionately affected, and being affected in so many cities?

> “The problems weren’t concentrated in just one particular region. The cancelations affected the entire Southwest network. People living in cities where Southwest has a big operation, like Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and where I am in the San Francisco Bay Area, saw cancelations in the double-digits.”

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Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by soylentnewsorg on Monday October 11, 2021 @03:55AM (#28825897)

an airport is a hub for an airline, but not for other airlines. if southwest has 50 planes at an airport, and delta has 10 southwest is going to be impacted. when your plane takeoffs are cancelled at your hub, every single flight that was going to use that plane later in the day, or the following day, is now missing a plane.

if Chicago O'hare is shut down, United is done for the day in half the country, because half its planes are stuck at O'hare. if Chicago Midway is shut down, only Southwest is screwed. if Atlanta shuts down, only Delta is screwed.

Yes, I'm sure there are other cities that also had planes. Like Phoenix. Except the plane that was supposed to land in Phoenix is stuck in Florida. Or the pilot piloting the plane already in Phoenix is stuck in Florida.

Planes go from one city to another. If you introduce a blockage along the way, you've now taken that plane, or a crew out of commission.

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Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by Ma8ee on Monday October 11, 2021 @03:20AM (#28825700)

Decades old might definitely mean duct taped and unstable. In about 1995 I witnessed the beginning of the end of at the time very successful company that just had tripled their whole organisation. But the code base was 5 million lines of a lot of copy pasted literal spaghetti code. And only a handful of ageing coders that had been with the company almost from the start could get anything done. And then, one day, those damn customers demanded a Windows application, instead of the classy DOS application.

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