Sabre down globally

[Archphoto]

That's because they don't use Sabre. They use the same system as Qantas; Amadeus

Ahhhh, for that I'm very happy.

 

[a330j]

Sabre back up at 4pm today (according to VA twitter)

 

[MarkD]

And the world laughs at Sabre

 

[jpk]

Sabre back up at 4pm today (according to VA twitter)

At SYD they have been saying since 5pm that they have just switched to a backup system so they can check in manually at the gate. (maybe someone in VA confused backup with back up?).

 

[pauly7]

And the world laughs at Sabre

Unfort the average flyer doesn't understand the level of detail and the airlines cop the wrath...

Virgin has had a terrible run of system outages.

I wonder if the airlines get comped in any way for these things?

 

[whatmeworry]

The latest glitch comes just a day after Virgin warned it will record a loss of up to $110 million this year, which it blamed partly on the switch to the new booking system.
The airline conceded on Monday that the transfer to the new system meant it had handed as much as $50 million in revenue to rivals such as Qantas and Jetstar.
Qantas and its budget offshoot, Jetstar, do not use Sabre.

Read more: Virgin Australia Flight Delays After Sabre Booking System Crashes
​

QF laughing all the way to the bank!

 

[markis10]

QF laughing all the way to the bank!

Not really, they have had their own issues with Amadeus and both got caught by the leap second bug with Altea:

Amadeus admits ALTEA crash was a result of Leap Second bug | Tnooz

 

[pauly7]

QF laughing all the way to the bank!

It's the number one story on ABC news - wow that is normally reserved for Qantas being 1 minute late!!

References to previous outages, global issue, pissed off customers and poor communication from Virgin.

 

[totd]

Looks like they picked the wrong week to quit drinking...

FWIW, I got it straight away. Love those movies. Explosive. Dynamite. A must see.

 

[Archphoto]

How could QF or VA deal with this type of situation - obviously it has been global, but how exactly could they get around what is obviously a fundamental part of the airline industry? (Talking down time for either Sabre or Amedeus here).

Do they have specific "manual" operations at hand to deal with it? And if so, could they have handled the situation any better, or did they operate the only way they possibly could?

Enquiring minds would like to know - after all it hasn't *always* been computerised, now has it?

 

[serfty]

It's the number one story on ABC news - wow that is normally reserved for Qantas being 1 minute late!!

References to previous outages, global issue, pissed off customers and poor communication from Virgin.

The ABC did mention UA and AA as being affected as well.

 

[AdMEL]

The airline conceded on Monday that the transfer to the new system meant it had handed as much as $50 million in revenue to rivals such as Qantas and Jetstar.

Read more: Virgin Australia Flight Delays After Sabre Booking System Crashes

QF laughing all the way to the bank!

Interesting - that's the first time I've seen the cost of switching to Sabre quantified. It's a lot!

 

[TheInsider]

How could QF or VA deal with this type of situation - obviously it has been global, but how exactly could they get around what is obviously a fundamental part of the airline industry? (Talking down time for either Sabre or Amedeus here).

Do they have specific "manual" operations at hand to deal with it? And if so, could they have handled the situation any better, or did they operate the only way they possibly could?

Enquiring minds would like to know - after all it hasn't *always* been computerised, now has it?

Qantas has recently acquired a web-based back-up check-in system, which is separate from Amadeus but can pull basic data from Amadeus. If if's a communications link that is down, well that's a different story.

 

[mardy]

As someone who works in the IT industry, it seems odd that a critical system like Sabre could have a worldwide outage like this.

If I were building a system like this I would set up independent systems in each region and perhaps for each airline.
These systems would then all communicate with each other as needed. (E.G Sabre US West could request flight availability from Sabre AU for example)

That way if something broke down in the US, VA could keep on running domestically with only international codeshares affected.

Of course we will probably never know what causes these sort of outages, but it does sound like everything is a bit too centralised to me.

 

[totd]

If I were building a system like this I would set up independent systems in each region and perhaps for each airline.
These systems would then all communicate with each other as needed. (E.G Sabre US West could request flight availability from Sabre AU for example)

In theory that's great. A collection of independent systems with some sort of federation would be great for scalability and resiliency... But we live in the age of the cloud. More than likely something knuckle-headed like a ups catching on fire or a truck running into a substation has taken out that critical bit of infrastructure that everyone has forgotten about.

We can only hope that this gives Sabre inc the incentivation they need to remove the single point of failure.

 

[777]

booked flight home for tomorrow. I'm calling that a win.

 

[serfty]

As someone who works in the IT industry, it seems odd that a critical system like Sabre could have a worldwide outage like this.
....

Illustrative of the perils of 'the cloud' ... or at least having a centralised mega system.

Qantas had similar issues with Amadeus once or twice in recent years, LH down, QF down etc. I guess that's why they are investing in contingency.

 

[ATreeFiddy]

For myself and the other 12 pax that Virgin sourced an additional ATR for to do a CBR -> SYD run I'm going to call tonight a win too, all things considered.

 

[Melburnian1]

I was just about to post the same thing.

Looks like they picked the wrong week to quit drinking...

Someone asked what this was a reference to. It may have been to this article from a bit more than a week ago:

Virgin warns managers to cut costs

 

[anat0l]

Qantas has recently acquired a web-based back-up check-in system, which is separate from Amadeus but can pull basic data from Amadeus. If if's a communications link that is down, well that's a different story.

Web-based back-up, eh? I wonder if that basically works on a static data backup from Amadeus, which then logs changes to be synchronised when the main system comes back online. Sounds good until you start considering the stale data risk.

Anyway, good to hear there's a backup system; naturally, it probably hasn't been tested (i.e. a real "cut" scenario acted out to test the robustness of the system).

Comms link down - yeah, can't do much about that. Except plug the router back in.

booked flight home for tomorrow. I'm calling that a win.

For myself and the other 12 pax that Virgin sourced an additional ATR for to do a CBR -> SYD run I'm going to call tonight a win too, all things considered.

I wouldn't say 'win'. I'd say, "Thank <deity>!"