Brazil 2004 – IT Midia Conference

The flight from Toronto to Fort Lauderdale, Florida was on Air Transat, a first for me. It was a no-frills airline but the flight was mostly painless and efficient. Then a ride down I-95 to Miami to join Varig Brasil for the 8 hour flight to Sao Paolo, the largest city in Brazil. It seems that all airlines these days have challenges in modernizing the updating their information systems and Varig was no exception. Each passenger checking in at Miami International was at the counter for a minimum of ten minutes. Most passenger’s required that the agent place a phone call for assistance.

In the 1960′s, IBM developed a special computer operating system called ACP (airline control program) specifically for handling airline reservations and related data. Back then, communications networks were slow and expensive and reservation agents had to be very facile with the keyboard. Many abbreviations were used so that not too many "bits" had to travel to the central mainframes. Today it seems like the agent is required to enter an endless number of keystrokes, even when there is no change to the reservation and the passenger simply wants to check-in. Self check-in is a very good idea and I have generally had good success with it — but it is never available for international flights because of passport and visa handling. Enough about airline IT woes for the moment. On with the long journey. (read more)