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15 November - UA Flights Impacted by Unimatic Computer System Outage

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15 November - UA Flights Impacted by Unimatic Computer System Outage

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Old Nov 15, 2012, 2:47 pm
  #91  
 
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Looks like United's woes are now well known to the general public, not just FTers:
http://chicagoist.com/2012/11/15/tra...another_un.php

I love the photo caption. "Seemingly normal status" indeed.
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 3:27 pm
  #92  
 
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Originally Posted by M60_to_LGA
Looks like United's woes are now well known to the general public, not just FTers:
http://chicagoist.com/2012/11/15/tra...another_un.php

I love the photo caption. "Seemingly normal status" indeed.
Yeah - The stock photo Battleship Grey Tulip livery really gives that site some credibility.
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 3:28 pm
  #93  
 
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I shouldn't have changed flights

My original flight was UA5171 DTW-IAH, then UA654 IAH-SNA. I woke up two hours early and SDC'ed to earlier flights. DTW-IAH 5:50am departure had MX and delayed about an hour (website still shows 'estimated time' for both departure and arrival as of 5:30pm) IAH-SNA UA816 was delayed by 4 hours due to this system wide issue.
I guess it's just my bad luck to not stick with my original flights.
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 3:33 pm
  #94  
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Thursday's problems were exactly what United did not need, said airline and travel industry analyst Henry H. Harteveldt of Atmosphere Research Group. "This event shows an unacceptable lack of planning at United," he said.

"This merger has been an outright disaster on almost every count. United must make some changes in its executive leadership, starting with the CEO" and including its chief information officer if it wants to restore confidence among passengers, he said.

Shares of United Continental Holdings Inc. (UAL) fell 20 cents to $19.78 on a day when shares of other big airlines rose.
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 3:48 pm
  #95  
 
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Flight departure pushed back to 3:44pm (nearly 4 hours delay). Amazingly, boarding was timely and the door closed / gate pushed back around that time. Since then we have been sitting at the gate, not having pushed back, for another hour. Purser claims that delay is due to a computer failure has necessitated the luggage or containers to be manually scanned? I have no idea what system they are referring to. Anyway, quickly heading toward 5 hours delay now...
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 3:49 pm
  #96  
 
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Originally Posted by noROCclub
Update from Captain "those other United painted planes you see leaving are actually "Continental" planes. They have a different computer system. "
Thank you sir for the unvarnished truth. Integration is slow and they went with a lot of CO systems that were not up to integrating another airline and a more than doubling of capacity.

Last edited by iquitos; Nov 15, 2012 at 3:49 pm Reason: spelling
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 3:52 pm
  #97  
 
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no problems today from JFK to SFO We actually arrived almost 50 minutes early but then had to wait for a gate at SFO for 20mins Deplaning SFO domestic UA terminal looked much busier than usual???cancelled flights
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 5:03 pm
  #98  
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Flight 732 LAS-ORD this morning....just before we were to depart, Captain says we can't because of computer failure. She updated us every ten minutes saying they were telling her nothing....

Gate agent comes onboard and says we need to get off - take any carryons you have under the seat, leave the rest. After another half hour or so, he told us we were all going to go back on and get our carryons off the aircraft (which is usually code for "cancelled"....) Halfway through that, the system was back up and we reboarded. Still took at least an additional 45 minutes before we were in the air so almost 2 hours late leaving.

The flight to Dulles was almost boarded (normal on-time boarding) when they told us to remove our belongings from the plane...I guess that flight didn't get the memo that there was a problem...
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 6:08 pm
  #99  
 
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Do other capital intensive businesses fool around with these pathetic computer systems?
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 6:13 pm
  #100  
 
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Originally Posted by Morse
Do other capital intensive businesses fool around with these pathetic computer systems?
Yes. The motto of the FDA device branch that deals with medical computer software is "don't get sick"

FWIW both DW and i got upgraded this morning TPA-IAD. The rumor was that several connecting flights never made it.
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 6:15 pm
  #101  
 
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From talking to a number of IT friends at UA in Chicago they said the issue was with the pmUA system not interfacing correctly with Shares. The Shares side decided to stop accepting messages from the weights and balances system. Chalk this up to another pmCO issue. Good job SMI/J, keep up the good work!
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 6:17 pm
  #102  
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Originally Posted by Morse
Do other capital intensive businesses fool around with these pathetic computer systems?
You hear about outages in other industries, even the best architected systems have unanticipated failures.

What is unique about UA is two fold -- the frequency of the system failues, and the unprecedented nature of their technology regression during the 3/3 conversion.

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Originally Posted by shortkidd
From talking to a number of IT friends at UA in Chicago they said the issue was with the pmUA system not interfacing correctly with Shares. The Shares side decided to stop accepting messages from the weights and balances system. Chalk this up to another pmCO issue. Good job SMI/J, keep up the good work!
Sounds similar to what happened last time, just a few months ago. Not surprising it's SHARES related.

Last edited by iluv2fly; Nov 15, 2012 at 9:53 pm Reason: merge
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 6:19 pm
  #103  
 
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Sounds as if it's missing a vacuum tube....

My point is that if the company needs to continue to operate a system so failure ridden, something is wrong with the financial model. Perhaps airline ticket costs are too low.
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 6:37 pm
  #104  
 
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We sat at the gate for about an hour for SFO-SYD waiting for numbers. Looks like we got out just in time.
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Old Nov 15, 2012, 7:07 pm
  #105  
 
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Originally Posted by shortkidd
From talking to a number of IT friends at UA in Chicago they said the issue was with the pmUA system not interfacing correctly with Shares. The Shares side decided to stop accepting messages from the weights and balances system. Chalk this up to another pmCO issue. Good job SMI/J, keep up the good work!
but would that make unimatic shut down? I'm not sure. Even if something is not interfacing correctly, functions of a system still have some capability.
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