From The Independent: United Airlines warns of a planned system outage.
United is upgrading (upgraded?) their reservation system, which included (I believe) moving data centers, requiring an outage during which took down online services: passengers could not book/cancel flights, check-in, select seats, retrieving boarding passes. I read that United recommended people download or print boarding passes if they flew early on Wednesday.
The scheduled outage window has now passed; as a technologist, I’ve lived through upgrades which did not go as planned. Inevitably, (enforced) timelines do not allow for the level of planning requested, something unexpected pops and you’re reacting while keeping one eye on the clock. Not enjoyable.
That said, I’ve never worked on a system of this importance or magnitude. Airlines’ IT outages or airport infrastructure failure impacts flights, passengers, cargo, crews and are extremely expensive to airlines. Outsider’s guess is that United has been planning for 6+ months with built-in go/no-go checkpoints to ensure it was safe to continue. Undoubtably including a way to revert back to existing systems if necessary. All hands on deck, including C-level, high tension levels, lots of stress, plenty of food and caffeine.
Congratulations to United’s technology teams, as to the outside world you appear back online. Undoubtably post-conversion, clean-up tasks, but apparently successful if, for no other reason, United is not on the front page of every news site! Kudos!
Image Credits
- “UAL B787” by Riik@mctr is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
