Following my post about airport shenanigans yesterday.
Airline IT systems have improved immensely, but rather than tossing everything out and starting fresh, they were built on top of systems from the 60's and 70's so a lot of guff remains.
Even now when your agent uses a spiffy GUI terminal to check you in they will sometimes be working in what equates to nothing more than a terminal emulator.
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Everything is very complicated, and I am surprised more errors do not occur.
While only addressing airport codes, this video is very educational and an easy watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfOUVYQnuhw&ab_channel=CGPGrey
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In the past networking was HARD. Airlines had dedicated lines of communication to their data centres.
As a result, a number of companies sprang up to install and manage airline network infrastructure.
With the advent of the internet, networking became a breeze, but needing to maintain their monopoly on airports these companies remained as middlemen maintaining the illusion among airports and airlines that "networking is hard" and insisting airports could not survive without them.
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These companies deliberately obfuscated the facts, keeping the industry reliant on their services.
Rather than develop new protocols, even IATA came up with methods to use old protocols on modern networks.
Now the industry is waking up but it is still reliant on some very old technology maintained by some very out of touch companies.
But bear a thought for IATA which has to develop standards for ALL airlines and ALL airports in an environment where the smallest slip up impacts millions.
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I remember we installed some hardware (for an airport I'm sure everyone on famichiki has visited) that communicated with multiple airlines.
At a meeting someone asked if we would need multiple internet connections, one for each airline?
I had to explain to the guy, when you visit Amazon, then visit Facebook, do you need an individual internet connection for each?
The middlemen are responsible for this deliberate dumbing down of airports in order to keep them reliant on their services.
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@tokyobybike Yes, you do need to buy a new Internet with maintenance contact for each client.
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@tokyobybike @takosix I would like to buy one (1) internet please
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@pippa @takosix Would you like Google with that?
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Another story.
Check-in counters at airports are multi use, they can be used by any airline.
When the agent arrives, they choose their airline and log into the terminal to process passengers.
Our hardware reads the passengers boarding pass, figures out which airline to communicate with and gets on with the job.
It took countless meetings explain, no, nobody has to switch our machines manually to use different airlines and that passengers of all airlines can use the machines simultaneously.
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Keep these stories in mind when next you hit a speedbump at the airport. It could be a lot worse.
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@tokyobybike
Wow - love it !!!
(former travel agent and ticketer...)
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