Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest?

Re:Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest? by pavlov on Thursday December 29, 2022 @11:29AM (#34174296)

Airline systems are some of the oldest computing architectures in use.

The Sabre reservation system was created by IBM for American Airlines in the 1950s — when a computer filled an entire building floor and was built out of vacuum tubes — and remains actively used today by multiple airlines. The programming language has been switched several times over the past 60+ years, but essential compatibility remains.

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Re:Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest? by ethbr0 on Thursday December 29, 2022 @11:54AM (#34174641)

Indeed. Probably the only equally complex and old dynamic computing systems out there are railroad and federal economic ones.

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Re:Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest? by persona_reuse on Thursday December 29, 2022 @12:00PM (#34174718)

I can't remember where I read this and I can't find a cite right away, but I bet someone can confirm-or-correct me: the 6-letter reservation code for your flight? That used to be an explicit pointer of memory in oldold Sabre.

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Re:Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest? by tracerbulletx on Thursday December 29, 2022 @12:50PM (#34175522)

The IBM 1301 disk manual (A22-6785), for the 7090 computer that SABRE was first used with seems to have a record address scheme that matches.(see page 10, Record Address) http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/7090/A22-6785_1301_1302_on_709x...

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Re:Ask HN: What's Happening at Southwest? by rtev on Thursday December 29, 2022 @12:51PM (#34175526)

I really hope that’s true, it’s hilarious either way!

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