Hundreds Of Passengers Delayed

In bringing you this story, please allow us to introduce you to a concept that, while expensive, has proved most gratifying here at ANN.

"Percussive maintenance."

That's the kind of work you do on a computer when the computer itself is on the fritz. We strongly believe that, if you hit it with a hammer long enough and hard enough, things will get better. Even if your computer isn't fixed, things will get better.

Perhaps what Continental Airlines needs is a bigger hammer. The company's main computer system crashed Sunday, stranding hundreds of passengers at its Bush Intercontinental hub in Houston (TX) and nationwide.

That was Saturday morning. For the next 36 hours or so, crew members had to calculate their own weight and balance, wind speed and course correction and fuel computations by hand -- something most haven't had to do since they were green young GA pilots.

Passenger Ben Bentzen of Austin (TX) was stuck on board his ground-bound flight to Costa Rica for almost two hours Sunday. After he was finally allowed to deplane, he told a reporter on the telephone, "I see a bunch of unhappy passengers wishing they were taking off now." Ironically, a lot of them had more computing power in their laptops than Continental had at the time.

"We're having to deal with passengers who can't go anywhere," said Bush airport spokesman Ernie DeSoto. Of course, he says nobody told him of any cancellations. The computers were down, remember? "We're putting them in any spot we can." Guess he didn't get the email, huh?

Well, it's all over but the crying now. Continental says it's trying to figure out what caused the computer system to go down in the first place. And a lot of employees who had to deal with a lot of very angry passengers don't ever want to go through that again.

"I've seen thunderstorms that gave us worse operation than that," said Continental spokesman Rahsaan Johnson.

FMI: www.continental.com