Originally Posted by
slowplay
What you "heard" isn't correct. If so, the same restrictions would have been apparent on the MD-11, L1011, and 777's. They were all flight planned at their appropriate speeds for ambient weight/conditions/fuel and crew costs.
Is the 744 going out at .79 as well?
Pilots give DT a bunch of crap all the time, but I remind you to compare how the IT integration has gone compared to our peers. No USAirways merger meltdown. JetBlue had trouble changing to Sabre. How about a few props for the folks that are actually making that portion of the business work, so we can kevetch about dual releases and single engine taxi...
They have done a good job and made the right decision at the right time based upon the time they had allotted to make the system work.
One thing that has been stated on here that many do not seem to grasp is DAL IT and infrastructure, accounting, reservations, part stores programs etc are linked to SAP.
A little background on SAP. Generally speaking, once the SAP template is designed for a company or a BU it is in effect matured. My wives company converted to SAP a little over a year ago, and let me tell you, SAP and the templates that it uses do not just get changed. If DAL were to go down that avenue, it would literally have to relicense the SAP software, and start anew with rebuilding the templates that each BU, sub BU department etc would use. It is very prohibitive. SAP is a great program, but you literally need to get it right the first time. Changing it is a pita.
That said, NWA did not run on SAP and therefore many good programs could not even be considered. Their computing functions can be added or integrated in to an existing program like FPS 2.0, PARS or AWABS, but unless DAL is willing to pay for a new SAP template run, they cannot just swap out programs.
SAP is an amazing system when it works. Start tinkering with it, and it will throw garbage at you. Problem with that is that many of the functions, crosstalk etc are done behind the sense and because of this, it is very difficult to find the problematic formula on an up and running system. It can be done, but it is time consuming. I beleive we prefer to deal with what we have, fix what we can within the existing system and slay to competition.
Overall this company has created the road map on how to do integrations.
Everything for the most part went off well below the assumed rate of failure.