Computer failure grounds United flights
Bloomberg is reporting that a computer failure grounded all of United Airlines flights from 9-11 a.m. this morning.
The story says a two-hour grounding likely affected hundreds of flights, and United probably wouldn’t be able to return to its normal schedule until tomorrow.
[United spokeswoman Robin] Urbanski said the breakdown involved the computer United uses to dispatch flights. [Independent aviation consultant Darryl] Jenkins said the system appears to have been the one that computes United’s weight and balance plans for its planes, as well as a system that records when aircraft doors open and shut.
I guess United needs a better disaster recovery / business continuity / high availability plan for its data center and servers.
Posted: June 20th, 2007 under Data center disaster recovery planning.
[…] We were interested to see this note yesterday about United’s systems being down. This type of story helps illustrate the importance of high availability to the average consumer. For a number of industries, high availability is mission critical to the operation of their business and many, like the aviation industry, rely on Marathon for their high availability solutions. […]
Pingback by Are you available tonight? » Blog Archive » When high availability is mission critical — June 21, 2007 @ 9:07 am