HealthyAcademic

I have booked a number of flights on the site so I am quite familiar with it. I was referencing when the site goes down while trying to book a flight today specifically. But thanks!

jimrpa

Clearly they should have tossed the NWA IT VP out with the DC-9s

Evan!

It does not take away from your point at all. Sad... on DL's part.

TheMoose

Maybe they should have tossed out DLTragic instead? Maybe they picked the right person to finally get rid of DLTragic?

I know, I know, it's easier to simply blame the merger and former NWA people than it is to admit your stone-age reservations system cannot handle the load from modern usage and actually replace it.

jimrpa

Wrong, I'm simply looking at documented, factual results under the current iT leadership. The IT experience (mostly on-line) for customers has dramatically worsened since the merger. By all accounts, the former NWA website was very well-liked by former NWA customers, and apparently fairly reliable, stable and feature-rich. In the same vein, while it had it's problems, the Delta website and ancillary IT systems (such as GIDS, gate scanners, etc) were relatively stable, reliable, and offered beneficial features (such as instant posting of flights and mileage to SkyMiles accounts).

Now, under the current IT leadership, former NWA customers have lost features and capabilities they valued and were used to, and the stability, reliability, usability, and feature set has decreased for both former NWA customers and former Delta customers. I don't care whre the IT VP came from - It's not germaine to the discussion. The point is that the entire IT experience for customers has worsened under the individual's leadership and it's time for that individual to accept responsibility for these failures. It's also time for Delta's leadership to recognize that this individual clearly is not capable of executing the most basic, fundamental aspects of their job - namely providing a reliable, effective IT experience to Delta customers.

hazelrah

Delta leadership can prestidigitate all it wants, the customers aren't fooled and Wall Street isn't either.

I can't remember which analyst's report I read about Delta's quarterly results but the analyst cited "technolgy issues" as a risk item.

Delta leadership made the decision to consolidate onto an aged system, now they own the consequences.

Cellisttoo

I want to have a magic computer like the reservation agent in the picture which will mysteriously increase the size of my economy class seat. Now, that would be a great medallion benefit!

Gargoyle

This has been explained her many times, but perhaps the explanations were too technical or complicated. I'll try to simplify it for you.

Deltamatic and Pars are both very old systems that have been built upon, modernized, patched and modified endlessly. However, they are not analogous systems; it wasn't a matter of selecting one or the other. Pars was an airline reservations system. Deltamatic is an airlines operations system. To give a really simplified analogy which you may be able to grasp, view Deltamatic as is a full operating system and Pars is a major application.

If they went with Pars, they would have had to cobble it together with other applications and systems, and that was not a reasonable solution. They needed something which could get up and running and keep the planes fueled and the landing slots allocated.

They recognize that the entire thing needs to be replaced with a system built on a newer foundation, but that is a huge undertaking. First they needed to pull the merger together and keep the planes flying, and although we still see a lot of problems and mess, and as they try to move forward things keep breaking, they seem to have done better than most airline mergers out there.

Air Brian

I haven't been able to book a revenue ticket for 3 days now. I am sitting in the middle of Africa, so calling the Diamond line is challenging. I keep getting:

We are unable to process your request. Please call the Delta Online Customer Support Desk at 1-888-750-3284 for assistance. Customers outside of the 50 United States should contact the Delta Reservations Sales office for their country. (#101728)

Instead I just booked a r/t Biz class ticket on UA/SAA (via the ultra-stable South African Airways website) to JNB for $8,599.80 for a week in Feb. I couldn't wait for delta.crap to work since my client insisted on my purchasing the ticket now.

Delta - this is actually costing you revenue...??

TheBisch

You know, I found an old Digital 486DX2 66Mhz machine in my garage last week. You think Delta.dumb could use it as an upgrade? It's got 16 megs of RAM in it. I was just gonna throw it out, but if Delta wants it... I'll be happy to donate it.

DLdweeb

Aha! I knew IBM was the cause of all these issues......

MikeMpls

The DC-8 in the image will help date it.

javabytes

Send them an email and let them know. There is clearly a failure to comprehend that this isn't just a minor annoyance with respect to checking SkyMiles account history or choosing a seat... it is costing them major revenue.

goaliemn

right.. because NW didn't have any such systems before.. they just would've had to expand existing. Deltamatic is an all-in-one, but NW ran with multiple systems before quite reliably. you make it sound like they would have to design new systems that hadn't been run/existed before.

Gargoyle

And patch all those multiple systems to work with the existing operations control center, tech ops, etc., which were remaining in ATL, ... you make it sound easy.

Just coordinating the two tech op systems, with one million parts in the combined databases (and which had to be done with absolute zero error) took a year.

In the end, they had to go all in with either one system or the other, and they had to make a choice and live with it. They chose a unified system which was already tied into their main base operations.