Originally Posted by
rowenb
[...] At that point I decided to bail - I cashed in some SkyPesos to take the direct MSP-SEA flight on DL. It took me 40 minutes to get through to GS (the MSP UC having closed by now) in order to get them to not cancel my return trip from SEA.
When I arrived in SEA a few minutes ago, I learned that UA 658 was still delayed! It is now scheduled to leave 17.5 hours late, at 10:15am Monday.
And all that for an itinerary that never touched the Eastern time zone…
What are the mechanics behind preserving the rest of an itinerary, and what would one say? "I am voluntarily not taking this segment because of IRROPs; I don't expect a refund for the unflown segment, and please preserve the rest of my itinerary?"
And I assume one can only do this in the case of IRROPs?
Originally Posted by
SPN Lifer
Clearly, weather can create overwhelming burdens and demands on computer systems through the sheer number of passengers and reservations effected.
The same principle is used for a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against websites by hackers.
Originally Posted by
eng3
I'm also confused how weather can cause computer issues. Unless for some reason UA places all their computers in one physical location and there's a prolonged power outage due to weather. Or just poor software that can't handle all the IRROPS activity?
Maybe a coincidence, definitely not good mix
Originally Posted by
mh3265a
The UA computer system is still sluggish and problematic today. I think their tech issue is technical a separate issue from their weather/IRROPS yesterday. However, those IRROPs and more people using exacerbated the issue.
Weather-causing-tech-issues seemed strange to me as well. Though the theory that it was a separate tech issue, exacerbated by unusually high usage (itself caused by the groundstops and weather) seems plausible. It seems ironic that an industry so reliant on technology has some of the flimsiest out there. It's like their house should be made of stone, but they only made it out of straw; then a medium, not-even-that-bad-wolf came along and sneezed once. And the house fell down.