Charlotte data center providers, like airline ticket holders and anyone who has been watching the national news, are baffled by the computer issues that have been plaguing US Airways and United Airlines over the last few weeks.  Both airlines suffered outages over the Father’s Day weekend that caused delays for US Airways passengers, and outright cancellations at United Airlines.  Issues at United resulted in the cancellation of many flights and delayed nearly three times as many flights worldwide.

On Sunday June 19, 2011 US Airways was suffering from computer system issues that were causing delays in its flights according to the Wall Street Journal.  The computer system outage lasted nearly three hours early Sunday morning.  Details have been limited, but anyone with an understanding of technology operations has to be wondering about the stability of the company's network.  The issues have been creating significant problems for the airline with a $1.36B market cap.  The outage comes just over a week after US Airways endured an outage that affected its reservation and confirmation system.  As of Sunday June 19, 2011 The Charlotte Observer was reporting that “US Airways has restored its computer service, but is still experiencing flight delays because of an outage this morning at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport.”  The airline said that “flights to and from Charlotte will continue to operate on a delayed basis…passengers may experience longer lines at the ticket counter or flight delays up to an hour.”

On Friday June 10, 2011 US Airways suffered an outage to their systems that affected their operations nationwide.  An airline official acknowledged then that US Airways’ computer system outage had affected not only its website, but also its airport computer systems around the country.  Officials at the airline were able to bring some of the company’s systems back online by that evening and were “working to restore operational order” at the time of the report.  According to Phoenix, AZ radio station KTAR, officials traced the cause of the outage to a fire near one of US Airways data centers in Phoenix.

United Airlines issues were far reaching in comparison with US Airways.  United, which ranks second only to Delta Airlines in both passengers flown and fleet size in 2010, endured a 5 hour computer outage on Friday June 17, 2011.  The company, which boasts a market cap rate of $7.9B, was unable to quickly remedy the situation and the outage resulted in the cancellation of 36 flights and nearly 100 flights worldwide; causing calamity throughout the Father’s Day weekend.  Recent reports stated that although US Airways suffered an outage, the airline didn't have to cancel flights because of their issues.  Although there was no mention of the event on the United website, Businessweek.com reported that United was blaming the problem on “a network connectivity issue” and was working to get operations back to normal as quickly as possible.  Passengers for both airlines are encouraged to arrive at the airport early and were given additional details about how to mitigate delays, including being encouraged to check in online and print boarding passes from home before traveling today to avoid further wait times.

With little information available, in context to the enormity of the issues, pundits cannot help but wonder about the priority of technology operations at major corporations that rely heavily on computer systems.  The reality is that as technology breakthroughs continue to make our lives better in a variety of ways, systems need to be in place to mitigate outages.  Note: computer systems, like all man made items, are not “failure-proof.”  Hardware and software failures will occur, and IT administrators acknowledge this.  Responsible CIOs and other IT executives design and implement redundancies in their networks in an effort to greatly minimize the impact of any particular system failure.

As noted, data centers are already a vital and integral component of any disaster recovery framework.  Since its merger with America West, US Airways has had its headquarters in Tempe, AZ.  The dramatic wild fires in the state were a contributing factor to the power outage in early June, which leaves many wondering about the status of a disaster recovery plan in the organization.  Any plan worth its merit would provide for the transfer of vital operations to a “mirrored” site in the event of a dire situation.  The wild fires in Arizona have burned over 720 square miles of land this year as of mid-June, and it is without a doubt in this writer’s mind that a plan of action is ready in the event that the wildfires threaten the US Airways data centers in Arizona.  The question will not be “if” to transfer operations to a disaster prepared data center if the threat is eminent, but rather “when” and “what location” to leverage.  

Surely, US Airways is prepared to leverage its east or west coast data centers in the event of an emergency.  US Airways was originally headquartered in Arlington, VA before moving to Tempe, AZ.  Google results show that US Airways had a data center built in the Charlotte area in the past.  With such a large east coast presence prior to the merger, US Airways could likely transfer critical operations to its Charlotte data center.