My guess is you have not been around long enough to know that airplanes flew for many years without ACARS. In fact you can still fly today without ACARS. It is in the FOM QRG 10.24 if you would like to familiarize yourself with the procedure.

You can dispatch a few flights with ACARS that are MEL'd inop...however, running an entire airline with ACARS inop becomes a huge hurdle.

I do fly the line but not for UAL. We get all that info over ACARS but have backups if it fails. Weights are printed at the gate, runway length requirements are in the ODM etc...

Yes, I am aware of that. You are welcome to fly that way, and it is legal. It is also legal to dispatch at night in IMC without the APU, or emergency generators on the 777. I probably will not be.

That's your prerogative. With 5 gens and able to autoland down to a single gen it's certainly in your wheel house to refuse for a single inoperative gen.....

The requirement is that the company be able to contact the plane at all times.

The big D arguably had the biggest IT meltdown in the last decade (if not ever) and your going to question this?

We have a backup....really?

The VHF AIRINC network meets those FAR requirements. Before ACARS, that was how airlines communicated with flight crews and is still used when the ACARS is inop. It is a hassle, but as long as the crew changes the appropriate frequency as they fly across the company, dispatch can always get a hold of the crew.

Remember once upon a time, long long ago. When we used to do manual weight and balance and runway data calculations and had a hard card for V speeds? Guessing you could throw all that stuff on an I Pad app. Just sayin'.

Acars inop operations used to be in The FOM.

Have we now improved things so that a single point of failure can shut down the entire airline?

Why yes siree, yes we have.