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According to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, yesterday’s $1 sale by go! Airlines crashed their web reservation system.

Good managers plan ahead

Jonathan Ornstein, chairman and CEO of Mesa Air, go!’s parent company, complained that “stodgy managements don’t know how to react” to go!’s business plan. Ornstein also said yesterday that their outsourced web reservations vendor, Sabre, wasn’t prepared to handle the unusually heavy amount of traffic during the fare sale.

Go!’s management team should have foreseen this surge in volume, based upon previous fare sales at go!, Aloha and Hawaiian Airlines. Management should have alerted Sabre that their GetThere system would get hammered on Monday, so that Sabre could have additional bandwidth and servers ready for the sale.

Instead, the go! web site was barely accessible until 3 pm HT (Hawaiian Time) yesterday. The airline extended the sale after irate customers bombarded company offices with e-mails and phone calls.

These two USA Today articles discuss the problems frequent travelers have experienced since the TSA and FAA placed additional restrictions on carry on items in commercial aircraft.

Some fliers seem willing to cooperate by checking luggage, even if this means additional delays when they arrive at their destination.

Other fliers state that they try not to check any items at all. I can understand this, as I would be very reluctant to place any electronic items in my checked baggage. Note that Dell Computer advises travelers to completely shut down their laptop computers, and remove the batteries from their devices. Additional care in packing is also necessary.

A few fliers seem willing to forgo air travel entirely. We saw this trend emerge after 9-11, but driving and teleconferences are no substitute for personal presence.

As an IT professional, there are times when I have to physically be at the site. It’s hard to start a remote session into a computer when the hard drive is dead or the power supply is blown.

This article first appeared on my old blog at http://www.bloglines.com/blog/wsodeman?id=46

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060814/ap_on_hi_te/dell_battery_recall

“The [Consumer Product Safety Commission]. knows of 339 incidents in which lithium batteries used in laptops and cell phones — not just Dell products — overheated between 2003 and 2005, Wolfson said.”

When we’re talking about overheating, we’re talking about explosions and fires.

Last week, British officials banned laptop computers and audio players as carry-on items, following the gel bomb arrests.

A UPS cargo plane was destroyed by fire last February in Philadelphia. The blaze may have been started by a crate full of laptop computer batteries.

This Dell recall may inspire airlines or the FAA to draft tighter restrictions on laptop computers, iPods and cell phones in commercial airplanes. Lithium-ion batteries are commonly used in both devices, as they perform well and last longer than other rechargeable batteries.

Passengers may not be happy. I always carry my electronic devices in my carry-on bag when I fly, simply because I don’t want them jostled and fondled in my checked baggage.

See the chapter on computer hardware in the IS 6100 textbook.

Laptop computers require a large amount of electrical energy. While it is possible to power a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone from an RJ-45 network jack, this only needs about 5 watts of electrical power.

You may be familiar with the watt, as it’s the standard measure for household light bulbs.

Five watts not nearly enough to power a laptop computer. Even the smallest laptops use much more powerful batteries.

In comparison, a AAA battery delivers only a few watts, and for a limited amount of time.

August 15: Here’s some additional information from Engadget, which has been covering this story for several months. Check the multiple links regarding explosions in this article. A reader posted a link to Dell’s statement here, including instrucitons on replacement batteries.

The New York Times reports that Sony management confirmed that the company manufactured and sold the affected batteries to Dell. The batteries were shipped to Dell customers in computers sold between April 2004 and July 18.

CNN reported on August 15 that Sony is paying most or all of the recall costs. While this minimizes Dell’s direct losses, they will see an immediate drop in sales revenue as customers choose Dell’s competitors.

The Houston Chronicle reports that customers are hammering Dell with e-mails and phone calls as news spreads about the recall.

Engadget reported on August 6 that an Apple PowerBook exploded. Apple has already mounted a recall for some PowerBook and MacBook models, and Sony batteries are involved.

USA: CNN.com - Southwest Airlines passengers find love in next seat - Jul 15, 2004: “Over the years, the Dallas-based airline which calls the city’s Love Field its home has received thousands of letters and scores of wedding invitations addressed to top executives from couples who met on one of the airline’s flights. ‘At times, we feel that we are the love brokers of the sky,’ said airline spokesman Ed Stewart.”

USA: Yahoo! News - Response to 9/11 chaotic: “Neither did the FAA alert the military to the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77 — until just minutes before the plane slammed into the Pentagon, according to the report. Likewise, the headquarters staff failed to act on a suggestion from the Boston regional control center for an immediate national alert to aircraft to secure their cockpits against intruders. Twelve minutes later, hijackers took over United Flight 93, the final plane captured by terrorists.
‘It just seems to me that those 12 critical minutes were a real opportunity to potentially do something about that fourth flight,’ said commission member Timothy Roemer, a former congressman from Indiana. Another commissioner, former Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, declared that the FAA ‘blew it.’ As Sept. 11 unfolded, it often was lower-level FAA employees who bypassed the chain of command and took the initiative to respond, according to the report. Immediately after the Pentagon was struck, a manager at the national air traffic command center ordered all commercial aircraft grounded on his own authority while higher-ups were still debating such a move, the report said. ”