[HN Gopher] Aer Lingus Seeks Compensation For Data Center Chaos ...
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Aer Lingus Seeks Compensation For Data Center Chaos That Cancelled
Flights
Author : belter
Score : 51 points
Date : 2022-10-08 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.datacenterdynamics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.datacenterdynamics.com)
| pliny wrote:
| I don't understand the article:
|
| Posted October 07, 2022
|
| Subtitle: An IT outage hit the airline's check-in
| and boarding systems \*last month\*
|
| First sentence: Aer Lingus is seeking
| compensation after an outage to its IT systems led the airline to
| cancel more than 60 flights \*last night\*.
|
| Which is it? Are there two separate incidents?
|
| Then later: The flight cancellations occurred on
| September 10
| belter wrote:
| One outage: Sep 10
|
| > Aer Lingus is seeking compensation after an outage to its IT
| systems led the airline to cancel more than 60 flights *last
| night*.
|
| Data Center News reporters get tired too you know, it's a
| lonesome job.. :-)
| bell-cot wrote:
| This might sound weird - but does _anyone_ have a story where
| "just trust IBM for something important" actually ended well?
| (Maybe limit it to the past 10 or 15 years.)
| detaro wrote:
| This all being in one location with little redundancy ... somehow
| not surprised, but still, really?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _[IBM]_
|
| Anything the customer doesn't think to ask for, the customer
| doesn't get.
| jabiko wrote:
| > A network card used in the carrier's backup systems was not
| working
|
| It should have been redundant, the problem is that the
| redundancy didn't work and I guess nobody noticed until it was
| actually needed.
| ectopod wrote:
| To be fair to the IT people, the failover system couldn't
| have been any more redundant.
| chc wrote:
| It's the homeopathic backup problem -- they make sure to have
| a backup because they know that's best practice, but they
| don't have any checks in place to make sure the backup works.
| belter wrote:
| Details are sketchy at this moment, but Aer Lingus runs lots of
| AS400 and Mainframe, MVS/ESA, IMS, DB2 and all that stuff. From
| the linked description on one of the articles
|
| "...construction work damaged a fiber optic cable, wiping out
| the carrier's check-in and boarding systems. Issues compounded
| after it was found that a network card used in the airline's
| backup systems was not functioning, leaving Aer Lingus without
| passenger information for up to ten hours..."
|
| So this looks like they had a backup location, but the new
| Kyndryl ( IBM ) team had not tested failover in a while... They
| are probably just trying to recover standard contract fees from
| Kyndryl specified in their SLA's
|
| Edit: They sent this message at the time to their customers
|
| https://img2.thejournal.ie/inline/5868785/original/?width=63...
| graderjs wrote:
| Aer Dingus more like it...
|
| good name for a dildo app: AirDingus
| inglor wrote:
| Looks like someone might get fired for choosing IBM.
|
| Oh how times have changed
| bilbo0s wrote:
| They didn't choose AWS.
|
| Times haven't really changed, the perceived "safe" options have
| changed.
| leoedin wrote:
| I was on a 4 hour delayed transatlantic flight recently - which
| meant EU legislated delay compensation. It worked out as EUR600
| per person - more than we paid for the return trip. In a 200 seat
| aircraft that's something like EUR120,000 - multiply that by 10
| hours of delayed aircraft departures and the cost to the airline
| is huge! I can see why they'd want to pass that on to someone if
| they could.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Wait what ? I was delayed by 24 hours and missed out on
| connecting flights because of an Aer Lingus server
| infrastructure issue which caused them to cancel all flights
| for that day.
|
| They rebooked my flights but I was paid 100 EUR, which was
| barely enough to cover the cost of extra taxis, meals and stay
| for that night.
|
| I'm not an EU citizen so I'm not sure how that affected my
| compensation.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| The compensation applies to all flights to and/or from the
| EU, regardless of citizenship. You should look into filing a
| claim, I've heard it's not very time-intensive. There's even
| companies that take care of filing for you for a fee. The fee
| is taken out of the claim compensation, no upfront costs!
| londons_explore wrote:
| They try and fob you off with a little compensation (ie.
| EUR100) in the hope that that makes you not claim what the
| law says you're entitled to.
| nixass wrote:
| > Wait what?
|
| https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-
| right...
| newguynewphone wrote:
| I would love to see how this plays out, considering it was the
| fault of another 3rd party for the damage of the cable, or if
| they had drass
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If Kyndryl breached their contract with Aer Lingus, then
| they're liable.
|
| If Kyndryl wants to sue a third party to see if they can recoup
| some of that cost, that's their business.
| alistairSH wrote:
| What was the other third party? I assume the argument will be
| the airline paid for redundant data centers and IBM didn't live
| up to that portion of the contract.
| newguynewphone wrote:
| I haven't been able to find the name of who exactly, most
| articles only mention "unrelated construction work", which is
| why I made the previous comment, but as the other commenter
| answered, i guess that would be a separate lawsuit.
| abduhl wrote:
| Depending on the size of the construction company, any
| claim made against them will just result in them shutting
| down and going out of business if their insurance won't
| cover it. This is a pretty common occurrence in
| construction.
| redleader55 wrote:
| This looks like a great opportunity to learn a lesson and hire
| competent people to run their infrastructure, along with the
| associated cost of being redundant and highly available.
| mjhay wrote:
| But that's a "cost center" according to what the execs learned
| in business school.
| smcin wrote:
| 'They' = Kyndryl, Aer Lingus or both?
| hrunt wrote:
| I think the most interesting part of this article is that Ryanair
| was able to immediately offer affected fliers $100 tickets to
| their destination. Being a primarily US flier, I am amazed that
| their systems and flight vacancies allowed them to react so
| quickly to the opportunity.
| londons_explore wrote:
| No IT system is 100% reliable.
|
| They should have practiced what to do incase of a 100% IT outage.
|
| And I think for an airline that would involve just letting anyone
| into the plane who claims to have a ticket.
|
| If anyone wants to buy a ticket, you take their name and address
| and bill them later, then hand write a ticket.
|
| Sure, you might get fined for not meeting some laws about id
| verification, or a bit of revenue loss from people who find out
| and travel on fake tickets, but overall you're going to make more
| profit _and_ have more happy customers.
| nradov wrote:
| The security checkpoints are staffed by government employees.
| They aren't going to let passengers through without valid
| tickets. And what about checked bags?
| londons_explore wrote:
| I believe the only reason for the ticket check at security
| checkpoints is to prevent non-flying family members from
| attempting to go to the gate (clogging up the security
| checkpoint unnecessarily). There are websites which let you
| generate a 'boarding pass barcode' which will let you through
| security.
|
| Checked bags can just have a hand written label if needed. Or
| you have a bunch of machine-readable labels pre-printed in
| preparation. Or you do what smaller airports do outside the
| western-sphere, and tell people that they need to take their
| checked bags with them to the gate and leave them on the
| tarmac.
| nradov wrote:
| None of that is even remotely feasible or legal at
| commercial airports in developed countries. Ask anyone who
| works in airport management, or for the TSA. There is zero
| chance that they would agree to compromise their security
| control and baggage tracking systems just because one
| airline happens to be having temporary operational
| problems. Not going to happen.
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(page generated 2022-10-08 23:01 UTC)