I love that so many people here think they can think about the problem for 10 seconds and come up with a solution that hasn't already been considered a thousand times and discarded.
Someone hardcoded that field 50 years ago and it's impossible to change the type. It would be easier to just abandon planes altogether, and set up a parallel transportation system.
That comment explains the issue but exaggerates the impact. Sure, a change can be made and alphanumeric may not be right. No it won't be anything like the recent Crowdstrike issues. The impact of making a change on downstream systems is solved by planning it out. Communicating the intent and setting a switch over date. Some people may not heed the notices and their systems will crash. That's unfortunate, but just like Y2K or other mandatory updates, it must be done and when a crash happens it will suddenly become very important for that downstream app to issue a patch and at least they will know where/why the break happened.
In terms of datatypes, I like the idea of just going with a 5 digit integer. It seems fairly straightforward to change in most databases/systems. And while having a much smaller upper limit, it's 10x bigger than the limit that's taken us 60 years to reach.
Also, he mentioned no Alphanumeric datatype in Excel Format Cells. It's called General, because it's the default and most of that apps user's don't know what VARCHAR is.
> Some people may not heed the notices and their systems will crash
Some of these systems are indirectly responsible for keeping people safe and alive. This "oh well, you should have paid attention and taken care of it" attitude won't fly.
Seriously, this is something that could have been rolled out over the course of years. They could have talked about it at industry conventions and otherwise socialized the idea of updating dependent systems. Are those mission critical systems just willy-nilly connecting to these systems? Or is there some authentication? Because if there's authentication, there's usually some record of contacting the admin of that other system. Like how API service providers know who the owners of API keys are. Make it a required step of their annual FAA filings to certify that they have become 5 digit compliant (or whatever it gets called). If there's a way to make them prove it, make them prove it. If it has to be done to each aircraft, require it.
You get my point, there's so many practical ways to handle this. That's not to say it's easy but it's possible. Even just an audit of systems relying on communications to these legacy system(s) for actual flight operation would be a useful thing that I'd think most airline operators should have documented somewhere.
My thought in that comment was the further way from mission critical systems are the ones that will be more likely to unintentionally ignore the switch over notices and have a crash. At that point we're talking about Kayak.com going down or something that is absolutely not mission critical.
We need to have a way of rationally solving this issue that's not just some throw our hands up and ignore the problem until it's critical type situation. It a reality of our technical world that old stuff will require some breaking updates at some times.
>They also still have fun with flight numbers for instance running flight 1776 between Philadelphia and Boston; flight 1492 to Columbus; AAA777 to Las Vegas;
The "AAA" is a typo, they probably mean "AA777" for American Airlines 777[1].
A far as why the number 777 is amusing, it's gambling. The combination 777 is a jackpot on a slot machine, Additionally AA777 is a great hand (full house) in poker.
A competently designed system should be able to convert between "internal" and "external codes" using only trivial string manipulation (e.g. no external dependencies, nor any databases to load at runtime; while adding or removing the code type magic-prefix is trivial; and computing/veriftying/concatenating/trimming any check-digits should also be straightforward, like a CC or VIN check-digit.
...basically, copy what Stripe does (except I wish Stripe would announce a far smaller and reasonable length-limit for their Object-Ids instead of handwaving around a vague reference to needing as 255-char database column - because it messes-up all of my RDBMS query-plans' memory grants because it allocates (N rows * 255 bytes) whereas in reality all of my Stripe Object-Ids are well-under 32 chars in length, _le sigh_.
This suggestion is also obviously trivially discarded: it is safe to assume that many, many, many systems expect only numbers in those fields, and will blow up if they encounter letters.
Obviously, the solution is a blockchain and matching cryptocurrency where miners can generate flight IDs which the operators can then buy off of an exchange. I've already pre-mined all convenient and vanity flight IDs for a smooth launch, each ID will be sold at an automated blockchain auction with prices starting at $1000 each. IDs cannot be reused.
You're no fun. Obviously any such 10-second solution is unlikely to work in practice. The interesting part is why, specifically a proposed solution won't work; proposing some and having more knowledgeable commenters shoot them down is a way to map out the complexities of the real problem quickly. It's a very good way to learn.
Still, the speculation is more interesting than the mockery of it. If someone is interested in the topic and wasn't invited to the airlines' internal discussions, they are necessarily going to repeat some of those internal discussions.
Yeah, I really don't understand the point of coming to a commenting website where people comment on stories and not expect comments about how they'd do it. Everyone does it at least in their mind, and the speculation as a group is the most fun about reading the news.
What's the point of reading the news if not to muse about "what happens next" or "how we should deal with this" in the story of the humans.
Should we sit there going "Welp, I guess someone knows more about this than me". If we took that attitude you'd never speak about anything.
It's because people don't understand that the problem is not finding a solution, but implementing it. This space is simply a mess, much more than even your normal messy IT.
If you like a similar problem to scratch that itch there is also the 37 dogs problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMxoGqsmk5Y - a database whose primary id had a maximum of 6 digits, but the id was encoded as roman numerals.
Stop codesharing with marketing flight numbers that are useless. Airlines do perfectly fine selling tickets without having the flight marketed by themselves and they can handle inter-airline agreements without it.
Customer behavior is key here. There’s perceived risk with the dreaded “Multiple airlines” option when booking tickets, especially for international flights. No-one wants to find out the hard way that there weren’t agreements or reciprocal status or matching luggage allowances, etc. The code-share is shorthand for “we’re responsible”.
It's safe to assume that if you book on Delta's site then any routings they offer you will have interline agremeent.
Let's say you are traveling from Incheon to Atlanta on a flight with a Delta number. Would you go to the Delta desks to check-in? Maybe... is it a real Delta flight or a flight operated by Korean Air but marketed by Delta? I think getting rid of codesharing would make it much easier for travel novices.
There are so many agreements for crediting frequent flyer miles that while yes it can help reassure people, there is a million more routes that still credit miles without codeshares to the point where it's useless
There aren't that many solutions. You can go to 5 digit numbers, or use 4 characters with an expanded alphabet, or do nothing. What other solutions could there possibly be?
And if the answer isn't known by the sources the writer quotes, the writer should say so.