New tech made big storm less of a mess By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY For four days, United Airlines meteorologists watched the storm that became= =20 the worst snowstorm in years as it marched east. By the time it struck last week, United was ready. Activating emergency=20 plans that were being carried out at other airlines, United employees=20 repositioned dozens of planes and crews at airports outside the storm's=20 reach. They alerted 130,000 customers over three days via e-mail, cell=20 phones and pagers. Flight information was accessible on United's Web site=20 and many other travel sites, so travelers could quickly find out if their=20 flights were running, saving long waits on the telephone and needless=20 drives to airports. When the skies cleared, many fliers were already booked= =20 on new flights without waiting in ticket-counter lines. The storm of '03=20 was unquestionably a nuisance for travelers unable to get where they wanted= =20 to go. Less appreciated is how an array of technology =97 some of it=20 unavailable even two years ago =97 made this storm a little less aggravating= =20 before, during and afterward for managers and customers. It started with scheduling. United's operations managers could see the=20 storm would strike Washington, D.C, on Sunday by the time they held their=20 last conference call on Friday night, says Bill Roy, United's system=20 operations director. Managers decided to let the red-eye flights proceed=20 from the West Coast to the East on Saturday night. The morning flights=20 would operate from the airports likely to take the brunt of the storm:=20 Baltimore/Washington, Washington Dulles and Reagan National. About five=20 planes would be left at each, ready to fly when the weather cleared.=20 Airlines' task of rerouting hundreds of flights was made easier by the=20 latest airline-management software. In a matter of minutes, United managers= =20 devised a plan to reroute all remaining aircraft away from closed airports.= =20 It minimized the number of cancellations and maximized the number of=20 passengers that could be carried by what remained of the system. Other=20 software developed in the past couple of years let the airline reroute all= =20 the pilots and flight attendants so they could meet up with the rerouted=20 planes. "It was a very successful and planned event," Roy says. Airline scheduling sometimes turned into improvisation. One Delta flight=20 took off an hour early from New Orleans, bound for the Atlanta hub, with=20 whatever passengers that could be rounded up in hopes of beating the storm= =20 on connecting flights north. Travelers got ready, too. American Airlines says it saw a 130% increase in the number of customers=20 signing up for its flight status notification service in the week leading=20 up to the storm, spokeswoman Tracey Frantz says. The service lets customers= =20 receive automatic updates about their scheduled flight on their cell=20 phones, pagers, home phones or other ways they specify. FlightView, a=20 popular flight-tracking service, saw the biggest surge in usage since the=20 Sept. 11 attacks, says Lorraine Flynn, president of RLM Software, which=20 developed FlightView. It's available at Flightview.com, airline sites and=20 on major travel sites, including USATODAY.com and Travelocity. Last Monday,= =20 when storm-related cancellations peaked, Northwest Airlines received=20 235,000 hits on its NWA.com site =97 almost quadruple normal volume =97 from= =20 customers checking flights. Northwest's automated flight-change warning=20 system sent 11,989 notifications to customers' cell phones, pagers and=20 telephones on the Sunday the storm reached Washington, compared with 154=20 the previous Sunday. The system allowed 740 passengers to rebook themselves= =20 on alternative flights from airport check-in kiosks. An additional 180=20 people who were eligible for compensation for canceled flights printed out= =20 meal and phone card vouchers at the kiosks over two days. Delta doesn't have that kind of automated kiosk system, but it did activate= =20 its bank of 200 reservations agents, who called all the customers they=20 could reach to rebook them on other flights. In the past, when a flight was= =20 canceled, reservations agents searched for alternative flights one customer= =20 at a time. Now a computer program can assign new flights to an entire=20 planeload of passengers in a matter of minutes, says Laura Picel, Delta's=20 director of reservations operations. As a result, Delta reservations agents= =20 contacted passengers from the 2,159 late or canceled flights last week in=20 less time. Though all the new communications technology helps smooth the=20 way for travelers, some caution against relying too heavily on it. Eric=20 Tsuchida, a marketing consultant who had troubles getting out of Amsterdam,= =20 Netherlands, says a United agent told him by telephone his flight was=20 running =97 at the same time an Internet site showed the flight was= canceled. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@escape.ca Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.dbombo.net/muddyangels/ TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************