Delta Computer Failure Grounds Flights Worldwide After Power Outage

originally posted by: NerdGoddess
While that certainly seems frustrating, I'd rather be grounded than be permitted to get on a plane that can't be tracked.

-Alee

The Delta system only tracks for internal purposes. All scheduled airline flights are tracked by air traffic control, usually by radar, where available, or if not, by reporting by radio at certain mandatory points.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Why is that system not decentralised?

Is it a security issue?

a reply to: TrueBrit

Ease of use. All their flights go to a centralized location so they have one system.

Had a similar event here in Oz some years ago with Virgin Airlines when a software upgrade went wrong affecting mainly domestic flights until it was sorted out. It happens no matter how thoroughly software is tested offline in advance - computers crash, databases get corrupted, backups take time to re-install as do software rollbacks.

a reply to: Pilgrum

It just happened to BA in London last week. They rolled out a new system and it brought the network down.

a reply to: F4guy

Oh, I did not know it worked that way, thank you for providing that information. See this is why I love ATS. I can always learn something new, or expand on knowledge I had!

-Alee

I think the problem should be looked at through Legacy eyes. They have a great deal of what many data centers would view as older or even antiquated IT equipment. To keep up with what is going on in the Industry, and all of the mergers and changes, they do what a lot of companies do... they build API's to these sub-systems that rely on the Hub to distribute them, and like Zaph had pointed out earlier, it all goes through a central hub, but the computing systems are distributed. But,if the Hub data center is not totally redundant, whether or not it was power and/or a domino effect, it did them in.

I do not know their real environment, but it seems like it is something like this, to me, anyway.

Oh... and this kind of outage happened back in May of 2004 Delta grounds all flights.

a reply to: charlyv

Delta has admitted that a small fire was involved that cuased this problem with their computers

originally posted by: research100
a reply to: charlyv

Delta has admitted that a small fire was involved that cuased this problem with their computers

The fire was not the problem, it was the single point of failure.

If you are a large corporation you should have a disaster recovery plan. Hell I was designing for DRP to be put into the works within 12 months on a tech startup that cost less than 20k to get off the ground.

No excuse for this.

SPAM removed by admin

SPAM removed by admin