Sunday, September 15, 2013

When Defects Go Big Time

I remember a conversation with a test manager many years ago who worked for a major airline. This gentleman told me about the great challenge of ensuring ticket prices are correct. He said that if the price is off by just a few dollars, millions of dollars can be lost in a day - and this was in the 90s!

I'm sure by now you have heard about the free tickets issued by United Airlines recently. Those of us in testing are thinking, "Man, I'm glad that wasn't on my watch."

Regular readers of this blog and my newsletter know that I don't attack companies over public defects. I prefer to use them as learning experiences and let people make up their own minds.

Sometimes in class case studies, we make a list of risks. One of the risks is often "bad PR" or "loss of credibility/trust". I often tell clients the two places they don't want to wind up are on the front page or evening news. It's hard to measure that kind of impact.

In the recent United case, there are measurable costs, as United as decided to honor the bookings.

El Al Airlines had a similar defect on August 8 of last year. According to reports immediately after the defect, the airline said it would honor the fares. But, a day later they walked that decision back. They did eventually honor the prices.  "In all, about 5,000 tickets were sold before the error was fixed. El Al blamed an outside contractor for the mistake." (http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/08/08/website-glitch-offers-travelers-a-big-airfare-bargain/)

A few years back when I was working with one of the big travel websites, they had a defect in the currency conversion rates. People were booking rooms in the U.K. that could cost up to $1,000/night for a penny per night. The company only honored those which were part of a package deal because the people could rightfully say they didn't know there was an obvious problem. I think they honored something like 4,000 reservations!  (By the way, the big travel websites have a huge data quality challenge because they depend on the vendors to provide pricing.)

At the end of the day, it often becomes a PR decision. There have also been legal cases on these kind of problems where the case is based on whether or not the website is an order entry system or not. Now, if you or I book the wrong dates, they will charge us a fee to change the ticket. 

However, in researching this article, I did discover that, "In January, the Department of Transportation enacted a new regulation to help protect consumers when they’re buying airline tickets. It states: 'The seller of the air transportation cannot increase the price of that air transportation to that consumer, even when the fare is a mistake.' But that regulation has never been tested in court. So as far as consumer rights attorney Brian Bromberg is concerned it’s still really up to the passenger to take action." (http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/08/09/el-al-to-honor-all-tickets-in-price-snafu/)

Back in 2003, Sheraton had a similar defect where they sold $850/night hotel rooms in Bora Bora for $85. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/news/2003/2003-01-14-starwood2.htm

Sheraton chose to take the PR hit and not honor the bookings. "Over two days, 136 people booked 2,631 rooms at the cheap rate and some made multiple reservations covering more than two months of vacation, Starwood says. If all the reservations were kept, the glitch would cost the resort $2 million."

In the above referenced article you will also see this little factoid, "United Airlines has had several glitches on its United.com that let some passengers pay $25 for San Francisco-Paris flights and, more recently, $5 for Chicago-Denver flights. In each case, United honored the cheap fares." And, there have been other United pricing defects, such as in July of 2012, tickets to Hong Kong for $40.

"It's deja vu all over again," to quote Yogi Berra.

The other side of the argument is like if you or I to the store and an item scans for .01, chances are either most people would not feel right about paying the incorrect price. Plus, the cashier would probably call the manager and they would take 10 minutes to find out the right price.

We don't know the reason yet for the recent United Airline ticket pricing defect, so I can't say much beyond speculation. I would love to see the root cause analysis. I hope United tells the public the cause much like NASDAQ did on the Facebook IPO performance defect.

The part that troubles me is that system defects of all sorts are becoming a pattern with the airline industry. From scheduling systems to ticketing systems and website problems, the stories are almost expected. My real concern is when the safety line will be crossed. I predict it will happen. With today's "systems of systems", there are extremely high levels of system integration. These systems are very difficult to test, to say the least.

I was on a flight once that was delayed because the database on the plane wouldn't work. The mechanic came on board with a CD to fix the problem! Avionics are one thing. The integration between systems is another.

The one lesson I know for sure is that software defects can get expensive, either in direct losses or intangible losses in image and confidence. People are getting used to minor defects in software, and we know there will always be bugs. But just like in Jurassic Park (I recommend the book over the movie), we need to be very careful. Some of these defects can grow into monsters.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this one!

Randy




2 comments:

Unknown said...

I would really like to hear the result of the root cause analysis on this one. I would be interested to know whether it was testing or configuration management at fault. If it was testing, was the problem due to cut-backs in testing budgets.
In my experience configuration management can cause a lot of unexpected problems in production, so I always try to get the configuration management team to simulate the production deployment into a test environment and test on that.
I hope we do not have to be worried about cross-over from ticket sales to aircraft systems. The testing of the aircraft subsystems is taken care of by Boeing or Airbus and their sub-contractors who have to fulfil the relevant industry standards for safety critical systems.

Randy Rice said...

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your comments. I agree. I would love to know how it happened. The reason I worry about the non-avionics safety issues is because a few weeks ago, I was pulled from a flight because "the computer said it was overweight." I overheard the pilot on the next flight tell the gate agent something to the effect, "That's odd. The computer says we're good to fly with this load." That flight had even more people for the same size plane. There is apparently a calculation that takes into effect temperature and other factors. Then, of course, there are the ATC systems, radar, etc.

Thanks!

Randy