The Airline Industry’s Problem with Absolutely Ancient IT

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Title	:	The Airline Industry’s Problem with Absolutely Ancient IT
Lasting	:	22.19
Date of publication	:
Views	:	2,2 jt

I’d be surprised if this isn’t a problem that will go away in 10 years because of specialises AI systems Crunching this type of data is exactly what AI was made for
Comment from : John Wood

I work IT, for banks and wholesalers Problems like this happen all over Mainly management pushing updates to later The CEO knows he will be out of there soon and wants his bonus So investing in a multi million dollars system to ensure the company runs smooth for years to come is of no concern So we push old systems ever forwards until it craps out…😊brAnd we get a new CEO, promising to solve it, and does a couple changes to interfaces, but the underlying infrastructure, the mainframe or core systems is never changed He collects his fat bonus, and he’s gone Rinse and repeatbrbrOh and I worked at IATA, crazy the stuff I saw there with regards to security and outdated infrastructure
Comment from : Nic Flatterie

I cannot stop but laugh when I see video snippets of people walking with no shoes in airport Security theater
Comment from : Motiejus Liudvikas Impolevičius

my name is jamar, i come from afar
Comment from : Thomas Slone

A moderm developer would lead to planes crashing
Comment from : jmw150

Your talking to fast
Comment from : Karim Zayed

Either management doesn't listen when they're warned of potential issues or the solution requires downtime and they're not going to allow it Either way there's a chance you'll end up here
Comment from : SolmanJapan

i have 2 keycap sets from IBM model M's for the SABER GDS system
Comment from : Jacob Hotaling

Dang this was informative as heck
Comment from : TheTuttle99

better ancient than run on your calculator algorithms
Comment from : Yoyo

Honestly the whole experience with airports in general is so frustrating that I don't even consider flying a viable option unless it's crossing an ocean I'd rather hop in my car and drive for several hours (or days even) than take a flight
Comment from : nope

As a 2-time Amadeus intern, I have to say you're totally right
Comment from : DJ

If you changed the interface to a GUI, the number of lines of code would go up by at least 10x, which means 10x the bugs
Comment from : Larry Dillon

Up until a few years ago, the California DMV was using MS-DOS as its OS brLet that sink in
Comment from : lovelessissimo

Oh look, United just had a huge IT problem which grounded their fleet but like you said, nothing will change They'll apologize and they'll say they'll do better next time but they won't
Comment from : DrabberFrog

bro u speak too fast
Comment from : Aslan Dogar

This seems like a game theory problem well suited to an ai model
Comment from : Nick Lockard

I spent 40 years as a mainframe programmer, and mainframes are still in use today Why? Because of speed and reliability The other factor is that converting to new software is a massive effort My last company started getting off the mainframe in 2006 and is now 17 years into its five-year plan It's a lot harder than people realize
Comment from : Paul Wetor

Ome tim, my united flight was cancelled due to an issue with one of the tires (don't know specifics), so United rebooked me on 2 Alaska flighs, and 1 American flight I was kinda surprised to get rebooked on other airlines, but glad to get to my destination without having to wait super long Poor gate agent looked pretty stressed, probably cause he had to rebook a ton of people who just had their flight cancelled, but he did a good job if you ask me
Comment from : Estrius

Good to see that the billions in taxpayer bailout dollars were well spent
Comment from : Nunya Business

I've had a traveling job for the past 20 years, traveling at least once a month and often a few times a month I NEVER schedule any work trips near the big holidays Ever There's just too much chance of overbooked or delayed flights, bad weather, angry people, and adding extra days to your trip
Comment from : Tubes12AX7k

Is it possible to gain access to the GDS as an individual and book directly?
Comment from : ElPapiChulo

Ancient software will NEVER crash Orly's famous last wordsbrbrNo, seriously, Air Traffic Control used Windows 31 for their weather monitoring for takeoffs and landings Runway Visual Range
Comment from : Mario583

It looks like this system is what failed in the UK yesterday, causing gigantic delays and chaos across the whole country on one of the busiest days of the year (it's a bank holiday):brbr"Nats said it was a 'flight planning issue' which had affected the system's ability to automatically process flight plansbrbrThis meant 'that flight plans had to be processed manually which cannot be done at the same volume, hence the requirement for traffic flow restrictions'"
Comment from : King Moron Productions

"It's unfortunate that the airlines haven't figured out how to use THE ALGORITHM to fleece each customer for as much as possible"??!? Seriously, CEOs aren't watching your channel, and after hearing that, I'm not going to either
Comment from : danmerillat

So one major fault to this video: Pretending that a GUI is better for trained customer service agents It's not Every time some garbage consultant firm comes around the golf course and sells a CEO on a billion dollar overhaul it fails every metric except the most important one: "padding the profits of the consultant firm"brWe can't design and build a functional reservation system now My evidence is the number of times it's been tried, and the incredible dumpster fire that resulted each and every time Too many people want a piece of the pie and end up making a nonfunctional mess that's quietly taken out behind the woodshed as everyone returns to SABRE
Comment from : danmerillat

it's the same thing in every company, the cost of replacing an old but working software is prohibitivebrbrFun fact i've came accross access 97 databases still running in 2023
Comment from : lk77

Any system that is made so simple that an idiot can operate will be operated by over paid idiots
Comment from : omstout

I kind of want to work in airline IT knowing that I'd literally never have to do anything 😎
Comment from : antenna

I'm pretty sure they don't use CLI anymore
Comment from : José Henrique Dall Asta

The question is: do you as a passenger are willing to pay 100-200 U$ for a flight ticket so that airlines keep up to date with all the trends and advancements? Or, do you prefer to pay 20 U$ for your ticket? You cannot demand as a customer to have the latest fab if you aren't willing to pay for itbrbrAnother point to make: politicians Politicians are scared shitless to approve anything new in aviation, everything in aviation has to be approved by the competent authorities, and I mean EVERYTHING No politician wants to have fingers pointed at them for being in charge of a newly approved method or regulation that ended up inconveniencing the lives of their constituents
Comment from : fpuentegomez

7:48 Oh nooooo they are using databank queries to communicate with the databank How worrying brbrwhats your problem, honestly
Comment from : Zukasa Productions

We got hacked by Russia and wont admit it America won't accept and report on a major foreign attack on US soil ever will they?
Comment from : J Findling

maybe the airlines should actually spend money to update infrastructure oh wait that would affect the profits
Comment from : Ryan Walker

Add all those great new features, and maintain the ability to handle 42,000 transactions per second making sure that two people anywhere in the world don't reserve the same seat? Easy-peasy, eh?
Comment from : Mark Rosenthal

I've worked in a GDS Their systems are a shitshow and they don't invest at all in modernizing I was the only developer in my country's branch and I was and intern, still studying for my degree, the branch was made basically entirely of salespeople
Comment from : Daril Marra

Was a restaurant accountant for a number of years We used a software called MAS 90 When you opened it up there was a graphic that had a bunch of crusty old white guys in a boardroom having a meeting It actually predated the corporate diversity movement I figured the 90 stood for 1990 It worked fine though!
Comment from : The Book Was Better

I just spit my food out at "globally seamless travel experience" Nothing is more anxiety and rage inducing than booking and managing flights The upsells are up there with the worst offenders Along with prices that are shown never being what you pay and every 5 minutes some js function just randomly increasing the price by a few per cent brbrFlight ticketing companies are among absolute scummiest pos companies that exist online
Comment from : Covle

wait this isnt video about they/them and other freaks of nature that are offended
Comment from : Tomasz Szupryczynski

I know a guy whos has a legit business selling floppy disks to airlines he makes serious dough with this and always looking for more inventory
Comment from : IGomez

This reminds me of an issue that a major hospital had when I worked there previously They had been using this archaic command line system for patient info that couldn't hold more than 5 80 character notes, and when they tried to update to the more common and modern billing system Epic, it kept causing issues, so they kept using this awful system It was incredibly stupid to have to use
Comment from : Chris Tam

Competition will solve all problems, they said
Comment from : Maxim Yarmolik

sound like trickery in the market place to me
Comment from : Den Sidste

This is amazingin 1991 i was working for GECS (General Electric Computer Services) as an expediter i needed to move a product from somewhere in the USA to Seattle and have it within 4 hourswe did that by paying for an ticket for the vendor to fly and carry on the product we would pick it up when they landed on my desk i had a terminal connected to Sabre so i could book tickets for our vendorsthe amazing part is the screens they show in this video are the same screens i used over 30 years ago!!!
Comment from : Mickey Mouse Park

You would be surprised that most things we use actually uses super old systems Bank systems like Credit card and ATM especially, transport systems, flight booking systems etc Being an older system means they use older infrastructure that isn't meant to scale to the level we use it at, especially when a problem occurs
Comment from : Tiros

I realized that the secret to making a million is making better investments||
Comment from : Freeman Booth

Hearing the word Amadeus again made me get PTSD lmao Oh my god working IT for airports was garbage
Comment from : Rob

4:26 are those credit card numbers?
Comment from : Alex M

After being screwed by most of the budget airlines, now i just spent the extra $30-40 and go with delta Probably saved me thousands in the long run now I got on my plane that Christmas while all southwest payers just sitting in the lobbies
Comment from : Daniel Wolff

Southwest has changed my flight three times without notifying me One of them was an international flight where they changed the day of departure
Comment from : emcsunw1

You have to wonder about this Newer tech is SO MUCH MORE unreliable than old tech Yes, old tech faces capacity issues, but the amount of time and energy spent trying to keep new tech running likely wildly overshadows this
Comment from : David Ryder

I'm not saying these old systems aren't bad, but the idea that a command-line interface is the problem is a bit out of touch Generally if you move to a GUI you do lower the skill floor, but you also greatly lower the skill ceiling Maybe that is the best option, but my bet would be they would not waste their time making features that are only used in emergencies to do connecting flights with rental cars or other difficult oddball scenarios, and in the GUI system the expert employees would not have the abilities to do what they do in the CLI (unless the GUI system is just a wrapper, but that would not solve the breal/b technical debt problems)brbr"Command line interface means old" is straight out of the 90s, lol
Comment from : kashperanto

Seeing this it just confirms: Avoid SouthWest if you can! They are not good for the industry
Comment from : Todor Todorov

I would have to suspect that this isn’t the only industry that is plagued by old, poorly performing systems This nation is following Japan in its steps of becoming an irrelevant global player by latching onto old habits
Comment from : 공차 성애자

Thanks for your proper voiceover with natural pauses So sick of lazy YouTubers who splice a thousand edits together, chopping out all pauses and creating a never-ending barrage of words where you don't have a chance to think or absorb the info
Comment from : Prizm

I am amazed how well researched this video is Congrats
Comment from : Mehmed Burak Soysal

You haven't go into the details of how lots of airline system is still using Mainframe, where no new developers want to learn and only maintained by old men waiting to retire
Comment from : Zi Xiang Wong

And yet, somehow, they always have money for billions in stock buy backs and dividendsfunny that
Comment from : Little Mac

Just like streaming services
Comment from : Below Average Joe

So the system is virtually perfect but the content creator shits on himself because it doesn’t have a GUI
Comment from : Starchaser

bOff topic but Southwest planes are ugly/b
Comment from : MrBibi86

I suspect that they're blocked because Omega Star still haven't got their sh*t tigether to support ISO timestamps like they said they would
Comment from : Magnus

This isn't really surprising in my opinion Y2K only happened because nobody bothered to have 2 more digits for the years when computers were able to, and a lot of companies pretty much go "if it ain't broke don't fix it" I remember going on a flight and the ticket checker was running in a virtual machine running Windows 95 running what looked like a DOS commandline, which I assume is the backbone for most other ticket checkers I see
Comment from : Awii

Aaaah yes incompetent IT…
Comment from : SqualidsargeStudios

It’s fucking greed not technology
Comment from : Machistmo

There is also the problems of: code share flights, and the fact that all “software update” is still prone to problems as systems are still COLBOL based and the “updates” are interface update The problem is less and less people know COLBOL In order to upgrade the system to completely severe the tie, ALL commercial flights around the world must be stopped and fingers crossed that the switch over will carry over all customers, flights, crews, and manifest data would transfer and all computer system will be able to handle and access the new system with old data
Comment from : Christopher Lai

If an update in technology is dependent on the approval of the shareholders than the outcome can be controlled by the consumer Controlled boycotting can be used with increasingly effective results to place a stranglehold on large companies like these in order to force their hand into innovating these new technologies
Comment from : Ethan Belton

I had no idea our infrastructure was so outdated
Comment from : Ethan Belton

The miracle of flight has degenerated into the nadir of customer service Sad
Comment from : Simon Coles

Airlines: br>makes kajillions of dollarsbr>doesn't spend a dollar on service, sends all profits to C-Levels & Investorsbr>not paying for their business costs causes it to collapsebr>government bails them them out of their own self-imposed collapsebr>now they've lost nothing and they're still gaining money at a crazy pacebr>but it's not quite the igrowth rate/i they want it to be, so you're going to pay more money for less servicebrbrI mean maybe we should just let some of these friggin airlines FAIL so that someone COMPETENT can take their place?
Comment from : liquidthex

Should do a video on Ryanair snd how the algorithm makes sure you never see a cheaper price after searching a flight
Comment from : Costas haralambaki

"Why invest to a level that the public don't even know is possible"brbrThe story of oligopoliesbrbrIf they all agree to to equally bad, they can maintain a market stability amongst each other
Comment from : Mr Hackathon

The railroad industry's tech in canada is trash We have an online employee system called CATS and its basically DOS
Comment from : GasFromMyAnus I0I

Лучше не бывает Не зря потратил время
Comment from : Biya Pore

Wait southwest is a budget airline???
Comment from : Fury 325 boi

Ah, accent Software A tale as old as time brMy current job is in manufacturing and good god the programs that some of these machines use are at least 10-15 years old And even some of the newer ones seem to have no quality of life features whatsoever And even our in house programs kinda suck It’s interesting
Comment from : AmericanKid778

I had to learn and use this system when I worked for the airlines (in 2009-10) I was sure they would have updated from this horrible system by now Sorely disappointed to find out they’re still using that ancient albatross GDS When I was hired, they told me “a new system should be implemented in a few months,” lol
Comment from : Hayven Rakotoarimanana

i’ve got a feeling southwest is about to have a very rough holiday season due to lack of consumer trust
Comment from : Myco

We use legacy systems where I work, and it is always underpaying or overcharging people and suppliers It is rife with fraud and error We keep it because it would cost millions to replace Strange world we live in
Comment from : abloogywoogywoo

If a system is using a CLI with a green prompt doesn't mean it is bad Generally it is very stable Just figure
Comment from : JustEthical

Seems like there needs to be more regulation forcing airlines to comply with a minimum standard of software up to date-ness Air travel at the current juncture is the backbone of the world economy How much more business could be done if a higher percentage of trips could be routed more efficiently, more business meetings made because a certain executive isn't stranded at an airport until the following day, and more freight flights make their destination on time completing orders and getting products into the hands of consumers faster Also, this slow adoption of new technologies by airlines seems somewhat deliberate If airlines supported these technologies making routing and ticketing easier, new airlines could benefit from these technologies as well which competing with a revolutionary would cost more than the current costs associated with the difficult, complex system already in place The current paradigm forms a barrier to entry for the industry and keeps executives nice and safe in a little cocoon of less competition
Comment from : Kevin

I Wonder what they make with all that money Just spend 250 bucks to fly for an hour
Comment from : Inko Gnito

I used to work in the IT as a developer for some years before switching my career to the hospitality industry in the Netherlands ive also worked for KLM for some years and notice they used like 100 different programs which are all as ancient as dinosaurs They should just develope one program that can do everything and much more easy airline companies are losing so much money its ridiculous
Comment from : MusicIsLegal

The story behind the computers in agricultural tractors is similar I'm a recent agricultural engineering graduate The hardware and software is from another era because loads of companies make equipment that has to run on any system and upgrading that system would make everything fall apart
Comment from : Isaac Linn