NY: Airline Blames Computer System for Delays

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Headline: Airline Blames Computer System for Delays [excerpts]

Source: New York Times, 4 Jan 2001

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/04/nyregion/04SPIR.html

Spirit Airlines, a discount air carrier that has left hundreds of its passengers stranded and furious at La Guardia Airport since Saturday's snowstorm, said yesterday that the problems were caused by a new computerized scheduling system that had failed to match flight crews with airplanes during one of the airline's busiest weeks.

Airline officials said operations were beginning to return to normal and the passenger backlog dwindling. But dozens of travelers who had been struggling to get home for as long as four days were still stuck at La Guardia yesterday evening, and several planes were still grounded because they had no pilots or flight attendants.

Hundreds of other passengers with flights scheduled yesterday were also delayed and waited in luggage- laden lines that snaked from the airline's swamped ticket counter 100 feet down the airport's concourse.

The passengers' frustrations had boiled over into screaming matches and near-fistfights Tuesday, prompting the posting of several Port Authority police officers around the lines, and anger mounted again by the end of the day, as it began to appear that more flights might be canceled...

...Mr. Kahan said the problems began when 39 of the airline's flights were canceled on Saturday because of the snow. New software the airline had just installed to help it figure out when and where to assign flight and ground crews could not correct for the canceled flights, he said, and so many of the airline's employees were given incorrect assignments.

The delays, while concentrated at La Guardia, where the airline has 10 arrivals and 10 departures a day, also affected passengers at the airline's other destinations, in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and in Detroit.

Compounding the problem was an arrangement requiring the airline's crews to call in on the same phone lines used by passengers. But over the weekend the phone lines were deluged with more than 50,000 calls from passengers and family members, so even pilots and flight attendants were left on hold, wondering when they should report to work...

...When asked why the airline had decided to install a new scheduling system during the busy holidays, he replied: "That's an excellent question. And maybe we goofed."...

-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@state.pa.us), January 04, 2001

Answers

Andre, thanks for the great post. I've been waiting to see something other than the weather conditions blamed for these horrendous delays.

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), January 04, 2001.

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