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Comment by mig39 | Hacker News Reader

Do they use the same software as Ryanair?

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41298931

Ryanair's problems are due to the fact that they were obliged to change their holiday year to follow European regulations, and they postponed this change for too long (to milk as much money from lucrative summer period). This, plus the fact that now many pilots are/will be soon over their allowed Flight Time Limitations.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ryanair...

Ryanair's problem is also that many pilots are leaving for companies with a better salary

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4512660/pilots-leave-ryanair-m...

Ryanair were lying. All their pilots left to fly for better airlines who are on hiring sprees like Norwegian Air.

They also were forced because there were strikes in France.

I got my flight cancelled because of that but got ~400$ in compensation.

BTW the exact same thing happened to Easyjet. My gf’s flight from barcelona to London got cancelled and she had to find a place to stay for one more day and a different flight. Easyjet refuses to refund or compensate her, mentioning strikes in France. Same shit as Ryanair, different reactions.

Anybody knows what are our recourse?

When Spirit's pilots striked, they told me my flight was "delayed or cancelled" (huge difference there first of all) then wouldn't show the actual status until 24 hours before departure at which time they removed the ability to pick a different flight. They literally took my money, cancelled my flight, then refused to give any information or a new flight or refund. Straight robbed. Afterwards they offered everyone something like a $100 voucher that had to be used in 60 days so I said fuck that. I had screenshots of everything and their support was nonexistent since they had cancelled so many flights and it was absolute chaos. I disputed it with my bank which was successful after about 3 months. I am in the US, not sure how disputing is with non-US banks and companies.

I'm just thinking: you'd probably never be able to buy a ticket from that company again, and possibly other companies, if they see you charged back. It's pretty unusual to charge back to an airline, it's usually something that happens with shitty online stores.

Yeah I considered that and I am fine with it. But with a debit card dispute it is not like with credit card or paypal where they just take the money back from you and say too bad. My bank temporarily gave me a refund and then starts an arbitration process with the company and if it succeeds will let me keep the refund.

There are EU Air passenger rights. Check out the FAQ at http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-rights...

I know about that, what are the recourses when the airline doesn't want to acknowledge these rights?

You email the airline authority. From my experience, airlines become very cooperative once you contact them.

Have you tried https://www.airhelp.com/ ?

American Airlines created their own computer system (SABRE) in the 60s. It spun off into its own company in the 2000s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabre_Corporation

I have a memory of accessing SABRE directly maybe in the late 90s to bypass travel agent websites, before services like Expedia etc exploded. Is that possible? Or am I remembering incorrectly.

Yes, it used to be accessible directly, and still is, at least with one level of indirection, via https://www.virtuallythere.com/

But this is also a red herring because I don't think sabre is used to manage pilots times off.

I think AA is still using SABRE internally for some components for crew scheduling; I did some SABRE work for them back in 2005/2006 as a contractor, and there were still bits and pieces of legacy code from the 90's in place when I was over there.

You can find some interesting results by googling site:virtuallythere.com

You could access SABRE pre-1996 via online services such as The Source, CompuServe, GEnie and AOL. Sabre Holdings launched Travelocity in 1996.

I remember this too. Used to go in there to look around and play with all he variables (flight schedule, fares, etc). I think it was called EaasySabre

True, though that has little to do with crew scheduling and bidding software.

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