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American Airlines Resuming Flights After Computer Problem

April 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

American Airlines was forced to ground all of its flights for several hours on Tuesday after a nationwide problem with its computer systems. By late afternoon, its computers were back up and its operation were slowly coming back to life.

More than 400 flights were canceled and scores more were delayed after a systemwide problem that started around midday and lasted until around 4:30 p.m. Eastern time. Still, the airline said it expected cancellations and delays to last through the rest of Tuesday as it tried to restore a normal schedule.

American said the problem was caused by an inability to gain access to its reservations system, called Sabre. The electronic system, often described as the brains of an airline, is responsible for bookings and reservations, but also manages a wide variety of functions related to flights, including printing boarding passes, online check-ins, ticketing, and tracking bags.

While the cause of the problem was not immediately clear, the airline emphasized that the flaw was not related to the bomb attacks in Boston on Monday. Safety officials at airports around the country were on high alert Tuesday. A suspicious package at La Guardia Airport in Queens, for instance, caused the main terminal to be evacuated briefly, causing an hourlong delay on some flights, officials said.

Sabre said American’s system problem did not come from its computer systems. Other airlines, including Southwest Airlines and JetBlue, use the reservation system and have not experienced any problems, said Nancy St. Pierre, a spokeswoman for Sabre.

Such nationwide breakdowns are rare but not unprecedented, particularly when airlines merge. United Airlines experienced similar problems last year when its reservation systems failed repeatedly as it merged them with those of Continental Airlines.

But while American Airlines, which is still reorganizing in bankruptcy, has agreed to merge with US Airways, the two airlines are nowhere close to integrating their systems because the planned merger still needs to clear regulatory hurdles.

American said that its network system had experienced “intermittent problems,” which led it to ground the fleet. The airline said it would waive fees for passengers who wanted to change their reservation on Tuesday and give refunds to those people who wished to cancel their flight.

At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, thousands of passengers were stranded and waiting for flights, some of which were being canceled. Some passengers described being stuck for long stretches on planes on the runway unable to take off or, having landed, initially unable to move to a gate.

Gate agents at Dallas were as uninformed as the passengers were, reduced to getting information from the airline’s Facebook page. “My best guess is y’all’s best guess,” one agent said.

Kelly Bixler, 34, a project coordinator for an architectural firm, had flown from Texarkana, Tex., to Dallas en route to Milwaukee on business but after waiting hours for her connection decided to rent a car and drive back to Texarkana. “There are so many people so upset,” she said. “They just want to go home. This is crazy.”

Matt Wyglendowski, 42, a sales manager for Hitachi trying to fly to Indianapolis, was angry that the airline was not more forthcoming about the event. “It’s ridiculous when you know more about what’s going on than the ticket people,” he said as he checked his smartphone. “I got the update on Facebook 20 minutes before they notified people.”

Mr. Wyglendowski said he had planned to drive from Indianapolis to his business meeting in Ann Arbor, Mich., to save money. “God knows when I’m going to get to Ann Arbor now,” he said.

Peter Baker contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/business/american-airlines-cancels-flights-after-outage.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Service Cuts May Arise With Merger of Airlines

February 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The airline industry took a decisive step toward greater concentration on Thursday with the announcement that American Airlines and US Airways had agreed to merge, forming the nation’s biggest airline. The merged airline, to be called American, leaves just three major carriers — Delta Air Lines and United Airlines too — able to offer extensive domestic and international service, a sharp contraction over the last decade.

But while airline executives argue that mergers are good for passengers because they bring more service to more destinations, some economists and consumer advocates warn that all this consolidation comes at a price for travelers.

With fewer carriers, passengers have fewer options; fares and fees are now more likely to go up, particularly for flights between midsize cities. And more cities, especially smaller ones, can expect to see further reductions in service.

“It’s much easier to have tacit collusion with just three airlines,” said George Hoffer, a transportation economist at the University of Richmond. “It’s not illegal. But it’s like having a few big people in a small boat. Anyone’s decisions tie you all together.”

That helps explain why fees had become so uniform within the industry in recent years, he said, and why all airlines now charge extra fees beyond ticket prices for things like checking bags, rebooking reservations or even picking seats or boarding early.

Those extra fees now account for a growing share of airline revenue and are a big reason behind the industry’s renewed profitability.

Fares, too, have risen in recent years, according to the latest government statistics. Some of that increase, analysts said, reflects rising oil prices. And while airfares on average are still lower than they were in 1995, once adjusted for inflation, they have been steadily rising since 2008.

But some airports, where the number of carriers has fallen, have had steep increases in fares. Ticket prices between Delta’s hub in Atlanta and Detroit, for instance, rose more than 20 percent from 2007 to 2011, while the number of carriers serving that route fell to two from four, according to a study released last year.

Still, most analysts expect the merger to be cleared by federal antitrust authorities, who have approved seven major mergers in the last decade.

The last time the Justice Department challenged a merger was the proposed combination of United Airlines and US Airways in 2001. That merger was rejected on the ground it would reduce choice and possibly lead to higher fares.

Since then, regulators have taken a different view of airline mergers. Instead of looking at any carrier’s overall market share, antitrust authorities now examine whether a merger would decrease competition on specific routes.

The department raised no objections to the merger of Delta and Northwest in 2008. It required United to sell only a handful of takeoff rights at Newark Liberty Airport before allowing its merger with Continental in 2010. And when Southwest bought AirTran, federal regulators found in 2011 that “the merged firm will be able to offer new service routes that neither serves today.”

A decade ago, the Justice Department “would not have stomached mergers the size of Delta-Northwest, United-Continental, or American-US Airways,” said Paul Stephen Dempsey, a professor of global governance in air and space law at McGill University. “Now, having approved the gargantuan Delta and United acquisitions, it cannot equitably deny American the same.”

“Apparently, Washington believes that this is the optimum path to industry health, and that  concentration and collusion is preferable to regulated competition,” he said.

Airline executives say mergers are necessary to reduce financial volatility and restore a measure of stability to a business that lost about $60 billion in the last decade. Instead of stifling competition, the argument goes, bigger airlines with bigger networks provide passengers with more travel options, more destinations and, theoretically, better service.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/business/airline-consolidation-may-be-costly-to-travelers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Regulators Around the Globe Ground Boeing 787s

January 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The directives in Europe, India and Japan followed an order Wednesday by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration grounding the planes operated by U.S. carriers.

The decisions are a result of incidents involving a plane that was parked in Boston and one in Japan that had to make an emergency landing Wednesday morning after an alarm warning of smoke in the cockpit.

In Japan on Thursday, the transportation ministry issued a formal order to ground all 787s indefinitely, until concerns over the aircraft’s battery systems are resolved. All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines had already voluntarily grounded their 787s on Wednesday, leading to more than two dozen canceled flights.

European safety regulators also said they would ground Dreamliners, affecting LOT of Poland, the only carrier that operates the jets in that region. In India, the aviation regulator grounded all six of the 787s operated by the state-owned carrier Air India.

LAN Airlines of Chile said it was following suit, acting in coordination with the Chilean Aeronautical Authority.

And on Thursday, Qatar Airways said it would follow the F.A.A.’s decision and ground its five 787s, effective immediately.

The F.A.A.’s emergency directive, issued Wednesday night, initially applies to United Airlines, the only American carrier using the new plane so far, with six 787s.

Boeing, based in Chicago, has a lot riding on the 787, and its stock dropped nearly 3.4 percent Wednesday to $74.34. The company has outlined ambitious plans to double its production rate to 10 planes a month by the end of 2013. It is also starting to build a stretch version and considering an even larger one after that.

“We are confident the 787 is safe and we stand behind its overall integrity,” Jim McNerney, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The grounding — an unusual action for a new plane — focuses on one of the more risky design choices made by Boeing, namely to make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries aboard its airplanes for the first time.

Until now, much of the attention on the 787 was focused on its lighter composite materials and more efficient engines, meant to usher in a new era of more fuel-efficient travel, particularly over long distances. The batteries are part of an electrical system that replaces many mechanical and hydraulic ones that are common in previous jets.

The 787’s problems could jeopardize one of its major features, its ability to fly long distances at a lower cost. The plane is certified to fly 180 minutes from an airport. The U.S. government is unlikely to extend that to 330 minutes, as Boeing has promised, until all problems with the plane have been resolved.

For Boeing, “it’s crucial to get it right,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia. “They’ve got a brief and closing window in which they can convince the public and their flying customers that this is not a problem child.”

In Japan on Thursday, government investigators examined the 787 that made the emergency landing. Footage on the public broadcaster, NHK, showed officials removing a charred and swollen lithium-ion battery pack from the front of the plane.

Corrosive liquid appeared to have leaked out of the batteries, leaving streaks on their blue casing, said Hideo Kosugi, a safety official who is head of the inquiry. Investigators also found black discolorations outside exhaust vents on the plane, which suggested that there had been smoke inside the aircraft at one point.

“The batteries have retained their basic shape, but are black all over,” Mr. Kosugi said. Something caused the battery to overheat and spew liquid, he added, “but we still do not know what is the cause.”

The 787 uses two identical lithium-ion batteries, each about one and a half to two times the size of a typical car battery. One battery, in the rear electrical equipment bay near the wings, is used to start the auxiliary power unit, a small engine in the tail that is used most often to provide power for the plane while it is on the ground. The other battery, called the main battery, starts the pilot’s computer displays and serves as a backup for flight systems.

The maker of the 787’s batteries, GS Yuasa of Japan, has declined to comment on the problems.

Boeing has defended the novel use of the batteries and said it had put in place a series of systems meant to prevent overcharging and overheating.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/business/regulators-around-the-globe-ground-boeing-787s.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Bucks Blog: StellaService Revises Airlines’ Hurricane Grades

September 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

StellaService, a customer research firm that says it provides “mystery shoppers on steroids,” has issued a mea culpa to some big airlines. The firm concedes that it made some mistakes while ranking carriers’ responses to inquiries sent via Twitter, as Hurricane Irene approached.

Late Thursday, the firm said it was retracting its findings for American Airlines, and modifying its results for United Airlines, because its survey team had contacted the airlines via Twitter accounts that were inactive.

StellaService had reported earlier this week that the airline didn’t respond to any inquiries submitted via Twitter during a test last Friday. It has since removed American from the results of its Twitter test. The company’s founder and chief executive, Jordy Leiser, has been in touch with American Airlines to apologize. “We want to own up to our mistake,” Mr. Leiser said Friday. “We should have been on top of that.”

In the case of American, Mr. Leiser said, the problem occurred because when a Google search is done for “American Airlines Twitter,” the very first result that appears is a link to an inactive Twitter handle, which is what its testers used. Bucks gave it a try, and it’s true that the inactive account comes up at the top.

But it’s also hard to miss this message on the query result: “THIS IS NO LONGER THE OFFICIAL CHANNEL OF AMERICAN AIRLINES. We are now @AmericanAir.”

Mr. Leiser said he wasn’t completely sure the disclaimer was attached to the search result last Friday, but “I would assume it was.” He added that “Our team was too quick to take that result. This has been a very strong lesson learned for us.” He said the firm would adopt additional controls to make sure such mistakes didn’t occur again.

An American Airlines spokesman reiterated the company’s earlier e-mail response, in which it disputed the results of the survey: “Of the 78 tweets directed to us from Thursday through Sunday, a significant number of which did not request action, we responded to 46 tweets either publicly or privately to assist customers, and we also sent four proactive tweets with travel information related to the storm.”

Mr. Leiser reiterated his confidence in the validity of the firm’s telephone test, in which American had the longest wait time of 10 major airlines — more than 90 minutes. “We stand behind that completely,” he said.

In the case of United Airlines, which has merged with Continental, StellaService revised the airline’s Twitter response rate to 58 percent from “no response.” The initial result occurred, Mr. Leiser said, because of confusion resulting from messages the firm had sent to an inactive Continental Twitter account. United responded to those messages, but it used its United handle — so StellaService initially didn’t give United credit for them. (United didn’t respond to messages sent to its active United handle because they appeared to its social media manager to be duplicates of the questions submitted to the Continental handle, a United spokesman, Rahsaan Johnson, said.)

After talking with the airline, however, StellaService revised its findings to reflect those responses. “We are grateful that their updated data reflect the reality of our actions over the weekend,” Mr. Johnson said.

An updated chart reflecting the changes has been posted on StellaService’s blog.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e23b73599a61888e6c042f036694f74f

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Bucks: Tuesday Reading: Counting Calories? Your Diet May Need Updating

July 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

July 19

All About Chase’s New United MileagePlus Explorer Card

Chase’s Mileage Plus Explorer card, the new credit card for United Airlines customers, offers several new perks and a much bigger annual fee.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=932569165a41aa12dd46042b97c4c840

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Delta-Northwest Merger’s Long and Complex Path

May 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Airline mergers are complex and tough to pull off — witness the troubled marriage of People Express and Continental Airlines in the 1980s or the continuing problems in integrating America West and US Airways six years after their merger. So when Delta Air Lines acquired Northwest three years ago, executives knew they would have to resolve major labor, technology and financial issues.

What they had not fully anticipated were the thousands of tiny details that go mostly unnoticed by passengers but can make the difference between a successful merger and a failed one.

All airlines have their own way of doing things, developed over time and through labor negotiations. All have specific working rules, flying procedures, maintenance schedules and computer programs. And all have their own cultures. Delta always thought of itself as the gracious host. Hence its flight attendants poured the requested drinks. Northwest was the practical carrier; its attendants just handed over the can.

“It was like Noah’s ark out here,” said Peter Wilander, an executive at Delta responsible for in-flight services. “We had two of everything.”

Delta executives agreed earlier this month to discuss the minutiae of the Northwest merger to make the broader point that combining two airlines is an incredibly difficult task. The Delta-Northwest tie-up is now widely seen as a success, and that view laid the groundwork for two other, more recent mergers: United Airlines with Continental last fall and Southwest Airlines and AirTran, which was completed just last week.

“If you look at the history of mergers, the assumption was that you couldn’t do them successfully,” said Richard Anderson, Delta’s chief executive. “Everybody had come to the conclusion that these things are too big, too complex and too unwieldy to manage.”

Delta’s merger with Northwest was announced in April 2008 and closed in October of that year after receiving regulatory and shareholder approval. And yet it still took 14 more months for the airlines to fly as a single carrier, in January 2010.

Delta scored a major point by getting its pilot unions to agree to a common contract by the time the merger closed. Many analysts said this gave the airline a critical advantage by getting a crucial labor group on board from the start.

But that did not put an end to Delta’s labor issues. Flight attendant representatives accused the airline of using intimidation tactics after they lost a bid to unionize the carrier’s work force in November. The matter is under review by the National Mediation Board, which could call a new election.

Meanwhile, flight attendants from Delta and Northwest continue to work under separate contracts, each with their own work rules, and they cannot be scheduled to fly on the same airplanes.

And some merger-related work is still going on. The last Northwest plane was repainted only six weeks ago. Delta expects to spend another year completing an inventory of all airplane parts and maintenance procedures into a new database.

Each airline has hundreds of different technologies that book seats, print tickets or dispatch crews that need to be integrated. Failure here can leave thousands of travelers without a seat if bookings are misplaced.

Delta’s chief information officer, Theresa Wise, said the airline had to merge 1,199 computer systems down to about 600, including one — a component within the airline’s reservation system — dating from 1966.

The challenge, she said, was to switch the systems progressively so that passengers would not notice. Ms. Wise, who has a doctorate in applied mathematics, devised a low-tech solution: she set up a timeline of the steps that had to be performed by pinning colored Post-it notes on the wall of a conference room.

A major switch happened when the new airline canceled all Northwest’s bookings and transferred them to newly created Delta flights in January 2010. It required computer engineers to perform 8,856 separate steps stretched out over several days.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9ee3673b7efa50753441b86bd943798c

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