Ocn Vw 1K

Sorry to all those experiencing IRROPS from this outage, but two of my three Mac computers, running pre v. 10.7 OS have been experiencing various intermittent UA Shares glitches for the past three months, such as inability to complete a booked reservation, inability to get into or stay in expert mode, endless sign-in loops, failure to get intelligible flight status info, etc.

Ironic that this morning's website performance has been more stable for me than most days.

xzh445

I'm pretty sure that you are not running Native SHARES on your Mac.

garkster

Let us not forget pmUA was also perfectly capable of this sort of thing, and I'll hazard an opinion that the one I cite was significantly worse, i.e. more disruptive, than today's circus.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...perations.html

I was amused today, however, by error messages from the reservations page like (paraphrased) 'cannot find any airport like SFO' -- of course, unlike June 2011 when I was booked to fly to London, today I was only cruising for award availability. Truly YMMV, always hoping to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Anyone want to start a pool as to the when the next systems debacle will occur?

PV_Premier

i don't think that is what this poster was implying...

CDKing

So glad I didn't fly yesterday. I cancelled as soon as the weather waiver went up. Call center guy thought i was crazy as everything was still on time. The flight ended up taking a 3 hour delay which would have caused me to misconnect and the computer problems would have made me stuck in CLE.

RNE

A fate worse than death!

UTex09

Not sure if this is worthy of a new topic: Has anyone noticed their mileage balance differing from yesterday before the outage? I'm about 2,500 miles short of what I had when I looked at my account yesterday morning, and there are no line items on my account that would explain where those miles went.

eta; I am 100% sure they did not expire!

LilAbner

Believing nearly anything that some of them tell you is crazy!

SoCal

Had to phone about a future ff miles flight today, and got through quickly.

Jackstay

That's probably true, but performance -- or lack thereof -- of mission critical systems raises bigger questions. Is SHARES or SABRE or Apollo more complicated than a 747/777/787/whatever? Would it be acceptable if the aircraft had equivalent performance problems? (I'm staying away from the word "crashing.")

All of these IT systems have their roots in 1960s technology. Think 727s. How many times have the very expensive aircraft fleets of the major airlines been completely replaced in the meantime? Have the IT systems been similarly updated or outright replaced? I might be wrong, but somehow I doubt it. Think how much IT technology has changed in that period of time. I'm guessing it is more along the lines of adding a layer here and there, more powerful hardware, better communications networks, etc, but not a root-and-branch replacement. Maybe it's time?

Ocn Vw 1K

Correct. I was referring to website access to united.com.

Because of the many intermittent website failures, I've been on the phone much more with UA res. agents, and also generally gotten through quickly.

iquitos

Careful what you wish for. 3x5 cards are really cheap.

Jackstay

So are paper airplanes.

qukslvr619

Wife was flying CLLIAH onward. Agent in CLL said they couldn't board because UA systems down. Now checking onward flights show delay due to "operations".

At what point do they finally admit they need a better system?

kettle1

How can UA get a better system when they are trying to cut $2B? A better system costs money - so the answer is when they replace the Texas crew with people that know how to run an airline.

I feel sorry for the people that used to work for a great carrier. It must suck going to work these days for the folks at the "New UA".