More than money, AI needs this to keep flying
NEW DELHI: The departure lounge of terminal 3 of Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport on Saturday resembled scenes usually found at the more crowded railway stations in India, with passengers squatting on floors, thanks to the software glitch on Air India's servers that left thousands stranded. This, however, wasn't the first time the airline's software played truant — question is, will the airline ever learn?
An average delay per flight of 3 hours and 17 minutes greeted passengers travelling aboard Air India's 137 flights on Sunday — a day after 149 flights of India's national carrier were hit by a software shutdown of its passenger service system (PSS) that looks after check-in, baggage and reservation. Saturday’s 5 hour and 15 minutes shutdown, from 3:30 am till 8:45 am, caused a chain reaction on Sunday, on the airline's second and third sectors, with a distinct possibility of it being carried forth to today. An aircraft flies several sectors, or flights, in a day — so, for example, for an aircraft flying the Delhi-Mumbai-Bengaluru-Chennai route, Delhi-Mumbai will be the first sector, Mumbai-Bengaluru will be considered the second sector while Bengaluru-Chennai will be the third sector. Air India flies 674 flights daily.
Repeat offender
This is not the first time Air India’s PSS has gone rogue — last year, in June, a similar outage lasting three hours affected 25 of the airline's flights globally. Incidentally, in both cases the software was being managed by SITA. While last year, the airline claimed the blunder was committed due to network connectivity issues at SITA's Atlanta data centre, this year's snafu has been attributed to system maintenance, which incidentally, affected only Air India, according to SITA, which also manages the software for other airlines such as Virgin Atlantic and Air Vistara, none of which were affected.
Hard look at software
It's not just the software of Air India's ground services which is in peril — of greater concern is the glitch that can and has occurred aboard its flights. In 2014, an Air India flight from Melbourne to New Delhi with 215 passengers on board had to be diverted to Kuala Lumpur after the pilots noticed a software glitch. In fact, the software glitch was aboard a Boeing aircraft, the 787 — Boeing's track record in providing glitch free software for its aircraft has long been suspect. In 1997, a Korean Air flight on a Boeing 747-3B5B crashed less than 5 km short of the runway in Guam due to fault with the ground proximity warning system while the aircraft maker's Boeing 737 Max was involved in two crashes within a span of 6 months, leading to suspicions that Boeing intentionally hid ‘glitches’ in the aircraft, that led to the grounding of all 737 Max aircraft globally.
Meanwhile, Air India continues to suffer a daily loss of Rs 6 crore on account of extra fuel burn, cabin staff expenses and reduced flights since late February as its long haul flights from New Delhi are taking longer to reach destinations in Europe, the Gulf and the US because of the closure of Pakistan's airspace following the breakout of hostilities between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack. While Air India flights to the US from Delhi now take 2-3 hours extra one way, those to Europe take an extra 2 hours — prompting the airline to seek compensation from the civil aviation ministry for the Rs 300 crore loss it suffered till now.
[1][2][3][5][6][7][8][9]
from Business News: Latest News on Business, Stock Markets, Financial News, India Business & World Business News http://bit.ly/2vqAdan
Spillover effect
An average delay per flight of 3 hours and 17 minutes greeted passengers travelling aboard Air India's 137 flights on Sunday — a day after 149 flights of India's national carrier were hit by a software shutdown of its passenger service system (PSS) that looks after check-in, baggage and reservation. Saturday’s 5 hour and 15 minutes shutdown, from 3:30 am till 8:45 am, caused a chain reaction on Sunday, on the airline's second and third sectors, with a distinct possibility of it being carried forth to today. An aircraft flies several sectors, or flights, in a day — so, for example, for an aircraft flying the Delhi-Mumbai-Bengaluru-Chennai route, Delhi-Mumbai will be the first sector, Mumbai-Bengaluru will be considered the second sector while Bengaluru-Chennai will be the third sector. Air India flies 674 flights daily.
Air India, SpiceJet to fly Jet planes from next week[4]
Almost 40 to 45 planes will be operational within the next 10 days. This will help provide gainful employment with pay to some employees of Jet as the aircraft will be wet-leased (meaning hired with crew to operate them). The additional flights will mean the runaway fares will hopefully stabilise, at least on domestic routes to begin with.
Repeat offender
This is not the first time Air India’s PSS has gone rogue — last year, in June, a similar outage lasting three hours affected 25 of the airline's flights globally. Incidentally, in both cases the software was being managed by SITA. While last year, the airline claimed the blunder was committed due to network connectivity issues at SITA's Atlanta data centre, this year's snafu has been attributed to system maintenance, which incidentally, affected only Air India, according to SITA, which also manages the software for other airlines such as Virgin Atlantic and Air Vistara, none of which were affected.
Hard look at software
It's not just the software of Air India's ground services which is in peril — of greater concern is the glitch that can and has occurred aboard its flights. In 2014, an Air India flight from Melbourne to New Delhi with 215 passengers on board had to be diverted to Kuala Lumpur after the pilots noticed a software glitch. In fact, the software glitch was aboard a Boeing aircraft, the 787 — Boeing's track record in providing glitch free software for its aircraft has long been suspect. In 1997, a Korean Air flight on a Boeing 747-3B5B crashed less than 5 km short of the runway in Guam due to fault with the ground proximity warning system while the aircraft maker's Boeing 737 Max was involved in two crashes within a span of 6 months, leading to suspicions that Boeing intentionally hid ‘glitches’ in the aircraft, that led to the grounding of all 737 Max aircraft globally.
Meanwhile, Air India continues to suffer a daily loss of Rs 6 crore on account of extra fuel burn, cabin staff expenses and reduced flights since late February as its long haul flights from New Delhi are taking longer to reach destinations in Europe, the Gulf and the US because of the closure of Pakistan's airspace following the breakout of hostilities between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack. While Air India flights to the US from Delhi now take 2-3 hours extra one way, those to Europe take an extra 2 hours — prompting the airline to seek compensation from the civil aviation ministry for the Rs 300 crore loss it suffered till now.
[1][2][3][5][6][7][8][9]
References
- ^ Indira Gandhi International Airport (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ Air India (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ chain reaction (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ Air India, SpiceJet to fly Jet planes from next week (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ Virgin Atlantic (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ Vistara (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ ground proximity warning system (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ Boeing 737 Max (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ Pulwama (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
from Business News: Latest News on Business, Stock Markets, Financial News, India Business & World Business News http://bit.ly/2vqAdan
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