Overnight computer glitch has allowed thousands of AA pilots to drop their scheduled flights (12k)

[Nevilledog]

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Gio Benitez
@GioBenitez
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BREAKING: An overnight computer glitch has allowed thousands of American Airlines pilots to drop their scheduled flights. The union says at least 12,000 flights are now without pilots starting tomorrow through the end of July. -@SweeneyABC

12:52 PM · Jul 2, 2022

[Thomas Hurt]

1. Nice....I am supposed to go to Vegas this month on AA.

[Nevilledog]

2. Hubby is going to Wisconsin on the 12th......maybe

[Thomas Hurt]

3. Meh, they will probably fix it, but knowing my luck....

[Tetrachloride]

4. THERE IS NO GLITCH, as if there was a baby hiccup or a change in voltage

for a second.

1. Too much overbooking — possible.
2. Not enough computer staff — possible.
3. Not enough backup computers to test new software of schedules - possible
4. unclear instructions from management to programming staff. - probably.
5. Insufficient testing — of course yes.

[Hugin]

6. Maybe it was a combo platter...

A variant of your #3 (only not IT staff, data entry & scheduling instead) led AA to cheap out and have the pilots themselves or flight crews doing their own schedules. Burdensome. Then #1 kicks in with holiday travel leads to #4-ish and the pilots said “screw it”. Giving themselves the month off and a huge headache to AA prime.

So not really a computer glitch at all. A systemic disease. Easier to blame the computers (which only do exactly what they are told) than to maybe tell the truth about mismanagement.

[Tetrachloride]

8. ty for brainstorming. Although i have not been in a large

corporate environment, I discount the idea that pilots or crew are allowed such autonomy.

Once upon a time, i was both database and a bit of data error tracking.

and in that time, it took practice to understand data requests, especially for contracts in government social work

[Hugin]

9. Yeah, it is a stretch...

Not unheard of though as scheduling is a skilled and therefore expensive task that management is always eager to dispense with.

As was done in Soviet era Russia and shortly thereafter. Planes and routes were the sole responsibility of the pilots (like a bus). Scheduling was more of a suggestion, really. Once while taking a flight there, the pilot showed up very late for departure with a massive hangover. He decided to sleep it off and we ended up sitting for 10 hours in a hot hanger in Kazakhstan. Forget connecting flights in that situation.

Of course AA may be trying to use some sort of AI their nephew cooked up to save them the expense of having to pay for skilled and rare scheduling personnel. There’s another possibility.

[Duppers]

5. Yikes! Holy crap!

That's going to upset many folks' travel plans.




Btw...
Hubby's 2nd cousin is currently a pilot for American; her mom, now retired, was a flight attendant for American for almost 30yrs. Yep, her daughter is a female pilot.

A few yrs ago, her dad, hubby's 1st cousin, was #2 hotair balloonist in the U.S.
Guess that family loves the skies.

He took us up ballooning a couple of times. Thinking I might be afraid, he kept asking me the first time if I were okay.
Crap, I told him, I had skydived a few yrs before that. Ballooning was just nice, not scary.

[Rstrstx]

7. Oops