I love that so many people here think they can think about the problem for 10 seconds and come up with a solution that hasn't already been considered a thousand times and discarded.
And if the answer isn't known by the sources the writer quotes, the writer should say so.
A competently designed system should be able to convert between "internal" and "external codes" using only trivial string manipulation (e.g. no external dependencies, nor any databases to load at runtime; while adding or removing the code type magic-prefix is trivial; and computing/veriftying/concatenating/trimming any check-digits should also be straightforward, like a CC or VIN check-digit.
...basically, copy what Stripe does (except I wish Stripe would announce a far smaller and reasonable length-limit for their Object-Ids instead of handwaving around a vague reference to needing as 255-char database column - because it messes-up all of my RDBMS query-plans' memory grants because it allocates (N rows * 255 bytes) whereas in reality all of my Stripe Object-Ids are well-under 32 chars in length, _le sigh_.
In terms of datatypes, I like the idea of just going with a 5 digit integer. It seems fairly straightforward to change in most databases/systems. And while having a much smaller upper limit, it's 10x bigger than the limit that's taken us 60 years to reach.
Also, he mentioned no Alphanumeric datatype in Excel Format Cells. It's called General, because it's the default and most of that apps user's don't know what VARCHAR is.
Some of these systems are indirectly responsible for keeping people safe and alive. This "oh well, you should have paid attention and taken care of it" attitude won't fly.
Seriously, this is something that could have been rolled out over the course of years. They could have talked about it at industry conventions and otherwise socialized the idea of updating dependent systems. Are those mission critical systems just willy-nilly connecting to these systems? Or is there some authentication? Because if there's authentication, there's usually some record of contacting the admin of that other system. Like how API service providers know who the owners of API keys are. Make it a required step of their annual FAA filings to certify that they have become 5 digit compliant (or whatever it gets called). If there's a way to make them prove it, make them prove it. If it has to be done to each aircraft, require it.
You get my point, there's so many practical ways to handle this. That's not to say it's easy but it's possible. Even just an audit of systems relying on communications to these legacy system(s) for actual flight operation would be a useful thing that I'd think most airline operators should have documented somewhere.
My thought in that comment was the further way from mission critical systems are the ones that will be more likely to unintentionally ignore the switch over notices and have a crash. At that point we're talking about Kayak.com going down or something that is absolutely not mission critical.
We need to have a way of rationally solving this issue that's not just some throw our hands up and ignore the problem until it's critical type situation. It a reality of our technical world that old stuff will require some breaking updates at some times.
>They also still have fun with flight numbers for instance running flight 1776 between Philadelphia and Boston; flight 1492 to Columbus; AAA777 to Las Vegas;
AAA777.
Am I missing something?
A far as why the number 777 is amusing, it's gambling. The combination 777 is a jackpot on a slot machine, Additionally AA777 is a great hand (full house) in poker.
Someone hardcoded that field 50 years ago and it's impossible to change the type. It would be easier to just abandon planes altogether, and set up a parallel transportation system.
> It would be easier to just abandon planes altogether, and set up a parallel transportation system.
Yeah, that might be overdoing it just a bit.
This suggestion is also obviously trivially discarded: it is safe to assume that many, many, many systems expect only numbers in those fields, and will blow up if they encounter letters.
What's the point of reading the news if not to muse about "what happens next" or "how we should deal with this" in the story of the humans.
Should we sit there going "Welp, I guess someone knows more about this than me". If we took that attitude you'd never speak about anything.
- a technical solution that is generally somewhat obvious or at least is picking which of 2 or 3 proposed solution makes the most sense
- a co-ordination problem that will require hundreds of different entities to agree on timelines, rollout plans etc etc
Now, this does happen (Sweden switching traffic side of the road [0] an Y2K) every so often but it's a LOT of work.
A quote by Fry from Futurama comes to mind:
> Zoidberg: All 6,000 hulls have been breached! > Fry: Oh, the fools! If only they'd built it with 6,001 hulls! When will they learn?
Stop codesharing with marketing flight numbers that are useless. Airlines do perfectly fine selling tickets without having the flight marketed by themselves and they can handle inter-airline agreements without it.
Let's say you are traveling from Incheon to Atlanta on a flight with a Delta number. Would you go to the Delta desks to check-in? Maybe... is it a real Delta flight or a flight operated by Korean Air but marketed by Delta? I think getting rid of codesharing would make it much easier for travel novices.
A problem posited without sufficient solutions is an invitation to them to provide a solution for that problem solving dopamine hit.
Nevermind that nobody has asked for such a thing or whether they’re familiar with the problem space themselves.
Problem is decades and decades of software with the assumption of 4 digit flight numbers baked in.
My hunch would be an additional airline code would probably be the easiest solution.