United Airlines Massive Computer Crash Leads To Handwritten Boarding Passes
from the so-retro dept
Hopefully, you weren't flying United Airlines yesterday. As you may have heard, the company had a massive computer crash, which caused chaos at many airports. These kinds of things aren't new, but this one did seem quite impressive in terms of how much it impacted. Still, what interests me is that the airline sought to deal with no computers by handwriting boarding passes, some of which people started photographing and putting on Twitter.Moira Forbes got one that at least looked kinda sorta like a normal boarding pass, done on a boarding pass blank:
But what fascinates me about this is how people figure out how to cope when computer systems go down. Every so often we have these fear mongering stories about computer crashes, and we learn about how the Y2K bug could lead to the end of society or some computer hackers could create havoc by attacking key computers. And while there are computers that run some critical systems, even in situations like this -- where the computers are incredibly important -- when they go down it may create a major pain in the ass for some, but it's not the end of the world. People figure out ways to cope and to use alternative systems, such as handwriting boarding passes. It's not perfect, and there were plenty of people who didn't get to fly at all, but it's not like civilization broke down. Computer systems fail, people deal with it, and everyone gets on with their lives.
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Filed Under: boarding pass, computers, crash
Companies: united airlines
Reader Comments
The First Word
“I have been in working as a software developer since the mid-70s and I can assure you that we were working our butts off during the late 90s finding and modifying these date fields in large finance and insurance systems.
The only reason the Y2K bug wasn't a problem was because we put in god knows how many hours to make sure it wasn't.
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Mike if you have the time I do have one question out of curiosity. How long did it take you to actually get on the aircraft?
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Re:
Why hire professional system administrators who actually know what they are doing? Those guys are expensive. What is a lot worse, some of them might tell senior executives that they are idiots. Total failure is perfectly acceptable. It is not as if running an airline is any kind of important job.
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I have been in working as a software developer since the mid-70s and I can assure you that we were working our butts off during the late 90s finding and modifying these date fields in large finance and insurance systems.
The only reason the Y2K bug wasn't a problem was because we put in god knows how many hours to make sure it wasn't.
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Not to minimize that important work at all, but it must also be said that the Y2K problem was never the life-and-death issue that the media made it out to be.
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But 'security!'
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Re: IBM
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Re: Re: IBM
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Re:
IBM
UBM
we all BM
for IBM
(updated version?:
I B Soft
U B soft
we all B soft
for microsoft ?)
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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Doing it Manually
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Re: Doing it Manually
Well, damn. That might make it tough for us here at Techdirt...
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Yet...
From what I'm seeing, we are transitioning (backwards)from a written culture to a viewing culture, so we are not very far away from that point.
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Re: Yet...
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This does not mean that literacy is completely dying or ever will, just that it is required less than before and therefore fewer people read and write properly, or at all. How low will we sink is a matter of speculation.
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fundamentals
I just wish they had better handwriting.
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Re: fundamentals
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You just do what needs done
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Re: You just do what needs done
As the USA slides towards third world status in more and more areas, Americans had better get used to planning ahead for power outages.
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I suspect they treated the no-fly list for what it was, meaningless "feel-good" pandering that doesn't actually stop terrorism but makes a small portion of the population's lives miserable. They probably didn't have anyone checking it, and amazingly (or better, unsurprisingly,) no terrorists got on board any United planes.
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How wrong...
That may be true... but they may get on with their lives without a job, without documentation to back up legal issues, it could be the end of a corporation to have an entire network fail, i.e. network intrusion and a data breach/wipe.
That's about the most ignorant comment ever... the added stress and financial burden a massive failure puts on an organization is not just a simple "meh... we'll deal."
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Re: How wrong...
Insensitive, yes. Ignorant, probably not. The truth is that when tools fail, people adapt. Has been happening since man appeared on the earth 80k years ago, and it will likely continue happening long after we are gone. Whether or not people lose jobs or it makes life tough for the next couple years isn't going to stop people adapting.
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Twice while working there, the main server crashed, and we had to use the backup tickets. It certainly took longer than having the computer print tickets, but, as a back-up plan it worked. I just remember the looks on the customers' faces when they were handed carnival tickets. :-)
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1. Breaking computers
2. Breaking guitars
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It's about risk management
The issue, it seems to me, is when engineers/designers give people the impression that what they have designed won't fail (even worse, when the engineers themselves believe that).
If, on the other hand, society is told that systematic failure is a possibility and that there's a X% likelihood of that happening, then everyone can decide whether or not it's worth the investment to develop backup systems to cover the potential problems.
For example, archiving records is a good example. Everyone is told to make more than one copy. And some folks take the extra step to make copies on multiple media. If you want to make sure your precious photos survive, you might want to have them on your computer, on an external hard drive, on DVD, in the cloud, AND in hard copy format.
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Re: It's about risk management
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On the other hand...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/jul/04/rbs-ulster-bank-accounts
Sometimes even human ingenuity and workarounds aren't enough.
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