A one-time goof? Not quite. On November 29th, a similar embarrassment struck American Airlines, by some measures the world’s biggest carrier. A glitch in its computer system for scheduling pilots’ time off allowed too many pilots to take time off around the Christmas holidays. As a result, the pilots’ union estimates that 15,000 of the airline’s flights between December 17th and the end of the year have not yet been allocated a pilot.
“The system went from responsibly scheduling everybody to becoming Santa Claus to everyone,” one pilot told CNBC, a news channel. “The computer said, hey ya’ll. You want the days off? You got it.” The airline is scrambling to fix the problem and says it does not expect any cancellations. It is offering to pay pilots 50% extra to fly during the holiday period and hoping that the incentive will encourage them to cover the shortfall. But the pilots’ union claims that it is not that simple. It says that the additional pay is not covered in its employee contracts and cannot therefore be guaranteed by the airline. Whether or not the flights are covered, American stands to lose millions of dollars paying the pilot incentives or in the reputational damage flight cancellations would cause.
American is not the only airline that has suffered expensive IT glitches. In recent years computer-system crashes have caused thousands of flight cancellations, including on British Airways and Delta. But the potential for chaos is even greater around Christmas and New Year’s, when passenger volumes balloon and there is little space on other flights to rebook. This Gulliver, scheduled to fly American on December 28th, is closely monitoring the situation out of more than professional interest. According to the pilots’ union, there are currently flights without pilots scheduled to fly out of cities including Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, and, yes, Gulliver’s hometown of Washington, D.C.
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