ATLANTA — In the hours after the Delta Air Strains pc failure last month, the airline resorted to an archaic form of passenger processing: Writing out boarding passes with the aid of hand. Even after structures got here returned up, a few have been nevertheless sluggish, and gate dealers in a few instances needed to manually input codes from boarding passes. The manual procedures slowed check-in and boarding, delaying flights that did function. The episode led to a black eye for Delta, with extra than 2,000 flight cancellations over numerous days affecting humans everywhere in the world. The Delta failure also despatched a warning to any company heavily dependent on generation for everyday operations: Have a backup plan.
Such corporations consist of UPS, which also operates an airline in its shipping commercial enterprise and whose personnel use readers to log package movements and deliveries. They could additionally include hospitals, monetary technology corporations, and a wide range of different groups. Based in Sandy Springs, Ga., UPS said it often reviews business continuity plans and conducts physical activities. “United sstates hasbuilt redundancies at some stage in our worldwide network to ensure chronic operations for our customers,” the business enterprise stated. U.S.also stated it has technical experts available “to reply swiftly and reduce any impacts on service to our customers. Yet Delta’s system failure — certainly one of several that have stricken airways — showed how difficult it is for a era-based enterprise to reach again to vintage practices that are unfamiliar to personnel, time-consuming, and now not designed for the dimensions or speed of the modern operation