Software application development
This blog is intended to provoke discussion and exchange between like minded software application developers, engineers, architects, project managers - and keen hobbyists too.
Thursday 10 January 2008, 7:36 PM
Does BA re-boot its planes?
“It should only take about 20 minutes,” said the Cabin Service Director.
Do you really think they should have rolled it out with so many potential flaws?
… and another thing, BA Highlife magazine this month says the Top Gear Polar Challenge is installed – and it’s not. Integration please BA.
… and while I’m ranting, if a “random” computer service is used to select passengers for the BA on-board questionnaire, is that a good thing? I’ve done about twenty in the last year or two. They must know by now that I think their bacon sandwiches in the lounge are superb and the toilets are a bit messy.
Sorry – I like BA, they fly nice safe planes and are all nice people. Never write a blog with jet lag like I just did.
PreviousComments on this post
Ah yes - the longest reboot in history, god knows what OS they must be using. On a recent 10 hour flight I took, the four attempts to reboot took the best part of 4 hours by which point most people had given up - thank god for iPods and Sudoku.... Needless to say the business and 1st class passengers suffered no such problems!
Aside from in-air niggles - BA is one company I admire for use of IT. Their online check-in system is built with the single aim of making the user experience as satisfying as possible, whether you want to check in and get out or spend 20 mins picking your seat the website is a testament to good usability. I received a survey after my flight which was very smart - they used my recent flying history to make the questions highly relevant to the flights I had taken.
Still none of this makes long haul flights any more bearable... I am still saving up for those noise cancelling headphones...
What next? If this sort of thing keeps up people may be forced to actually talk to each other on flights.
What an awaful situation that would be.
(Fly Business Class, you get the Bose headphones to use on the flights with AA and others........)
IFE systems are famously unreliable on many carriers, and remain one of cabin crews' least favourite things.
Let me quote from a recent post on Pprune, the pilots' forum and one of my favourite haunts:
"It is my responsibility at work to start and programme the IFE on the 747/777/A330, and to try and fault-find and 'fix' it whenever it doesn't work as advertised.
It is one of the least enjoyable aspects of the job. I am technically minded, so it's not that. I am computer literate so it's not that either. The problem lies in the fact that IFE systems are notoriously opinionated and unpredictably moody.
The manufacturers swear on everything they hold dear that their system will under NO circumstance ever do X Y or Z, yet all of us know for a fact that X Y and Z are regular occurrences. And of course the fault can never be replicated on the ground and the dedicated mechs look at you as if you're some sort of total moron.
Similarly, the manufacturers will wax lyrical about the reliability of the system, its stability and back-up. While in reality, the systems crash for no good reason, behave weirdly when you least expect it, ignore whatever fault fixing procedure you let loose on it and will on principle do the exact opposite of what the manual says they will"
Rather more interestingly, I've had IFE systems go into diagnostic mode on me,revealing all sorts of interesting options that weren't available as per normal. There was one moving map with a 'pilot's eye view' that was particularly fascinating - shame it crashed every five minutes.
At least it's only the entertainment system they have to re-boot. When my local train operator C2C splashed out on a complete fleet of shiny new (purple) trains they had months of "teething problems".
The most concerning of which was the regular routine of pulling into a station and being plunged into air-conditioning-less darkness. After about 30 seconds it would all to return to life in time to set off to the next station where the cycle was repeated.
This went on for months although to be fair to them they are now consistently the best performing operator in London so I suppose it was worth it. Not the sort of thing you'd want to try at 36,000 feet though so I'll be leaving it a while before flying on an Airbus 380 just in case...
Ah the warm fuzzy world of travel technology.
Have you been on the Waterloo to Surrey line when it leaves Waterloo for Dorking and the automated announcement says that the next station this train is calling at will be Waterloo?
Wrong kind of keyboards - apparently.
