In our day to day lives technology has become a necessary evil. The level of dependency we have on computers can sometimes cause headaches. This happened Tuesday, April 17 at American Airlines when the company's reservation system went off-line. This is the heart of any airline, not only does it allow the passengers to check in, the system also collects frequent flier data, the weight of bags, how many passengers to a plane which is important because this is how technicians determine how much fuel is necessary for a safe flight. American didn't say what exactly caused the outage, but it could range from a multitude of events such as a software upgrade, communication lines severed, human error, or hardware failure. Unfortunately for passengers who departed where towed to the tarmac where left stranded for hours before returning to the airport. To make matters worse, American held passengers luggage for an additional two hours before returning it to customers.
As the economy continues to flutter back to life many airlines are merging, American has recently merged with U.S. Airways. This could cause further headaches for travelers as the airlines merge computer systems. Working in the IT industry, I can say with certainty this is an enormous endeavor and if it is not carefully orchestrated, reservation system outages will occur.
The airline industry struggles to provide excellent customer service, when one says airline many people think poor service or paying unnecessary fees. The industry is in dire need of a face lift, marketing strategies need to be more focused on the customer than whatever they are focused on now.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324030704578426960019111402.html?KEYWORDS=outage+snarls+american+airliness
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