Tuesday, August 9, 2016 The Wall Street Journal

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

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00573701

A power outage at Delta Air Lines grounded thousands of passengers world-wide during the height of the summer travel season, wreaking havoc on the carrier’s reservations system and drawing attention to antiquated technology that has plagued many airlines.

The Monday morning outage canceled hundreds of flights and snarled Delta’s efforts to alert passengers to the problems via its apps and on airline flight-information displays.

An electric problem at its Atlanta headquarters occurred at 2:30 a.m. ET and the airline was forced to hold hundreds of departing planes on the ground starting at 5 a.m., according to Ed Bastian, the chief executive, who apologized to customers on a video.

The technical problems likely will cost Delta millions of dollars in lost revenue and damage its hard-won reputation as the most reliable of the major U.S.-based international carriers, having canceled just a handful of flights in the most recent quarter.

The meltdown highlights the vulnerability in Delta’s computer system, and raises questions about whether a recent wave of four U.S. airline mergers that created four large carriers controlling 85% of domestic capacity has built companies too large and too reliant on IT systems that date from the 1990s. Delta merged with Northwest Airlines eight years ago.

These systems—which run everything from flight dispatching to crew scheduling, passenger check-in, airport-departure information displays, ticket sales and frequent-flier programs—gradually have been updated but are still vulnerable, IT experts said.

“It could have been a huge domino as a result of the power outage or bringing the system back up,” said Bill Curtis, chief scientist of CAST Research Labs, a French company that analyzes complex IT systems and hasn’t done any work for Delta.

A spokesman for Georgia Power, the Southern Co.-owned electric utility that serves nearly the entire state, said that its technicians responded to Delta’s problems early Monday and concluded the issue was a failed “switchgear.” That is like a fuse box at home that routes the power in and distributes it throughout the house.

In a statement, Delta said it canceled more than 650 flights, or about 10% of its daily total on Monday. As of 3:40 p.m. ET, it said it operated 2,340 flights of about 6,000 scheduled to fly.

Following the loss of power early Monday, “some critical systems and network equipment didn’t switch over to Delta’s backup systems.” the company said. It is investigating the cause.

The airline didn’t address the broader questions about its technology.

When flights resumed taking off at about 9 a.m. ET, Delta was warning that “large-scale” cancellations were expected to follow during the busy Monday morning rush hour in the U.S. and when passengers had limited options with rival airlines at or near full capacity.

Delta aimed to limit customer backlash, in part by allowing customers to change their booking at no cost even if their flight wasn’t canceled. Still, customers unleashed their frustration, including on social media. On a typical day, there are about 3,600 social conversations involving Delta on Twitter, according to social media analytics firm Networked Insights. On Monday morning, there were 43,000.

Mahesh Ariga, a 45-year-old employee of French consulting company Capgemini, didn’t think twice when Delta’s website wouldn’t let him check in for his 9 a.m. flight from Atlanta to Newark. Only after a kiosk at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport failed to call up his flight details did he realize he was in for a long day. His flight was delayed four more times.

“Losing a couple hours on a Monday is a big deal, and I’m just hoping these delays don’t cascade into the night,” said Mr. Ariga.

Neha Singh, a 26-year-old consultant for EMC Corp., arrived just in time for her 9 a.m. flight to Los Angeles from Delta’s Minneapolis-St. Paul hub, which Delta’s mobile phone app showed was scheduled to depart on time. At the gate, the agent said the flight had been delayed indefinitely.

Judy Olsen, 59 years old, who tried in vain to pull up her flight reservation at a Delta kiosk in the Atlanta airport, said: “My boarding pass was on my phone, and then it wasn’t.”

The problem, caused by a single computer router that malfunctioned at its data center in Dallas, forced the airline to shut the entire system and reboot it, a 12-hour process. The cost was $5 million to $10 million, Southwest said.

When Delta moved its 2008 merger partner Northwest Airlines to its system, the transition was smooth. Airlines continually upgrade their technology infrastructure to make it more durable, adding redundant power supplies to their computing centers and other facilities, increasing the number of backup telecom providers, and hiring outside companies that specialize in technology to handle such critical systems as reservations.

But whether it is caused by a power failure or a possum that chews through a power cable, which occurred once in the early 1980s at an American data center in Tulsa, airline computer outages usually cause more problems faster than similar breakdowns in other consumer businesses.

When departing flights can’t take off, tie-ups at hub airports follow because gates aren’t available for arriving flights. Further delays arise because planes and crews are out of position to follow the published schedule. It can take days for a carrier to recover and get all of its passengers to their destinations.

Gary Leff, a specialist on airline-loyalty programs, said it is a miracle that the systems work so well most times, given that they are legacy systems grafted onto other legacy systems, meaning airlines can’t possibly be fully prepared for every circumstance that could cause a problem.

—Robert Wall, Imani Moise, Patrick McGroarty and Suzanne Vranica contributed
to this article.

Write to Susan Carey at susan.carey@wsj.com

Copyright 2016. Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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00573702

Aug. 8, 2016 12:46 p.m. ET

Mahesh Ariga, a 45-year-old Capgemini consultant, didn’t think twice when Delta’s website wouldn’t let him check in for his 9 a.m. flight from Atlanta to Newark. Only after a kiosk at Atlanta’s Hartfield-Jackson International Airport failed to call up his flight details did he realize he was in for a long day. A Delta agent insisted the delays were standard.

His flight was delayed four more times.

“They clearly didn’t say what was happening,” said Mr. Ariga, who hoped to work out of Capgemini’s Atlanta office before trying again for a flight to Newark in the evening. “Losing a couple hours on a Monday is a big deal, and I’m just hoping these delays don’t cascade into the night,” he said.

Delta on Monday had to cancel about 365 flights and limit departures after a power outage at the company’s Atlanta facilities caused global computer problems. The No. 2 U.S. carrier by traffic said it was working to fix the issue and advised travelers to check the status of their flights while the issue is being addressed.

Rod Mezy, a driver for Cooper Global limousine, spent almost an hour in the chauffeur area of Atlanta’s airport waiting for a passenger who hadn’t even boarded her plane. “She just called to let me know she’s still in Philadelphia,” he said.

Mr. Mezy planned to call his dispatcher to see if any customers had been stranded on his end, in Atlanta. If not, he was pondering a nap in the food court.

Delta warned passengers to expect cancellations and delays, said they could make a one-time change to their itineraries for travel from Aug. 8 through Aug. 12 and offered refunds to passengers whose flights were canceled or “significantly delayed.”

While Delta has one of the best reliability records in the industry, its relative outperformance also left stranded passengers with fewer options than rivals in similar trouble.

For instance, the carrier last year ended its interline deal with American Airlines Group Inc., a standard contract that lets passengers rebook at discounted fares in case of problems such as bad weather or technical glitches. Delta passengers rebooking Monday on American would have to pay the full walk-up fare—usually the most expensive on a flight.

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“We’ve seen an increase in bookings throughout the day,” said an American spokesman. “It’s a Monday in August, so it’s a pretty busy day anyway.”

Neha Singh, a 26-year-old consultant for EMC Corp., arrived just in time for her 9 a.m. flight to Los Angeles from Delta’s Minneapolis-St. Paul hub, which Delta’s mobile phone app showed was scheduled to depart on time.

At the gate, she instead found at least one customer sprawled out on the floor and another berating the Delta agent to turn off computer monitors that continued to show the flight was on time. The agent said the flight had been delayed indefinitely.

“Usually the app is really good at updating you on what’s going on,” Ms. Singh said. “It’s my first day on a new project, and now I don’t know when I’m going to get there.”

Kelly Fuson’s Delta app reported her flight from San Francisco to Charlotte had been canceled just as she pulled up to the airport’s parking lot. She decided to venture in anyway hoping to rebook on a later route through New York’s JFK airport.

“I couldn’t even look at the flight on the app anymore, it completely disappeared. It won’t load flight details at all,” the 33 year-old marketing manager said. Rather than join the line of hundreds waiting to speak with a Delta agent, she set up camp at a coffee shop in the terminal to try her luck on Delta’s website and wait for a callback from the airline’s customer service line. An automated message told her to expect a call back in over an hour.

“I’ve been pretty loyal to Delta for about four years now, but this is about fourth trip in a row where there has been a delay or cancellation,” she said. “They had better do something to fix this. As a loyalty member I’d love to get some points, it would be great if they could send 20,000 points my way.”

Sarah Valencia and Shannon Murray, cousins in Chicago, worried their young children wouldn’t share their patience as they waited about two hours for a delayed flight from O’Hare International Airport to Atlanta.

“He’ll probably wake up right when we get on the plane,” said Ms. Valencia, 29, of the baby strapped to her chest. Referring to her own happily distracted son, Ms. Murray, 25, said, “We need to get there before somebody gives up on NetflixThen we’re toast.”

Write to Imani Moise at imani.moise@wsj.com, Patrick McGroarty atpatrick.mcgroarty@wsj.com and Beckie Strum at beckie.strum@wsj.com

Copyright 2016. Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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00573703
Jihadists Kill Dozens in Pakistan Hospital Attack
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and Islamic State claim responsibility; officials say assault was aimed at destabilizing trade corridor
By Qasim Nauman and
Saeed Shah
The Wall Street Journal. Online Edition. Thursday, August 17, y. -=-

Updated Aug. 9, 2016 12:01 a.m. ET

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Militants detonated a bomb in a crowd of lawyers in Pakistan, killing at least 69 people and injuring more than 100 others on Monday, in an attack claimed by two jihadist groups that officials said was intended to destabilize a nascent trade network linking Pakistan with China.

Authorities said a suicide bomber struck the lawyers outside a hospital in the southwestern city of Quetta, in Balochistan province. The attorneys had gathered to mourn a colleague whom militants had shot dead earlier in the day and whose body had been taken to the hospital, officials said, suggesting they had been lured there.

“The terrorists first targeted the lawyer, and they knew the body would be brought to the hospital, even if he was only wounded, and people will gather,” said Sanaullah Zehri, chief minister of Balochistan. “That’s where the suicide bomber blew himself up.”

The blast left the courtyard of the Civil Hospital strewn with bodies, footage from the scene showed. Victims, clad in the black suits lawyers typically wear, lay in pools of blood. Others who had survived, shocked and bleeding, were struggling to stand, the footage showed.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, said it carried out both the shooting and the bombing, and that it “resolves to continue” hitting targets in Pakistan. The group was behind an Easter Sunday bomb attack in a park in the eastern city of Lahore that killed more than 70 people earlier this year. The U.S. State Department last week declared Jamaat-ul-Ahrar to be Specially Designated Global Terrorists, a move designed to isolate the group and deny it access to the U.S. financial system.

Islamic State also claimed responsibility for Monday’s bloodshed via its Amaq news agency, according to the SITE Intel Group, which monitors the online activity of extremist organizations. “A martyrdom bomber of the Islamic State detonates his explosive belt on a group of personnel belonging to the Ministry of Justice and the Pakistani Police in the city of Quetta,” the Amaq statement said.

Pakistani officials have said that Islamic State doesn’t have an organized presence in the country, but have expressed concern about its ideological appeal. A faction of the Pakistani Taliban defected to Islamic State in 2014, helping form the group’s chapter in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The authenticity of either claim couldn’t be established immediately.

Lt. Gen. Asim Bajwa, spokesman for Pakistan’s armed forces, said on his officialTwitter account that terrorists were seeking to “undermine improved security” in a part of the country central to economic-cooperation projects funded by China. He said “all resources” would “be employed to control [the] situation.”

The Pakistani Taliban, which works closely with al Qaeda, has been at war with Pakistan’s government since 2007, but has split into factions in the face of a counterterror campaign by Islamabad.

Jihadist violence isn’t new in Balochistan. The province is plagued by attacks on the minority Shiite community, as well as a long-running separatist insurgency.

It was unclear why the bombers decided to target lawyers specifically but Pakistani officials said the attack signaled militants’ interest in disrupting aplanned economic corridor connecting western China with the Arabian Sea through Balochistan’s Gwadar port.

ENLARGE

Beijing has said it would spend billions of dollars on power plants, roads and other infrastructure projects along the route, which would give China a new trade link from its relatively undeveloped west to shipping networks at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. The plan is part of a broader effort by Beijing forge new east-west trade routes via a network of ports, pipelines, roads and railways. Insurgents have killed dozens of workers building a new road between Gwadar and Quetta since 2014, Pakistan’s military has said.

Pakistan is raising a special security force of 10,000 to protect the planned Chinese projects, which will be difficult to safeguard as they are spread across the country. Islamabad hopes China will help solve a crippling electricity shortage, enable the country to industrialize and make Pakistan a trading hub. Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad couldn’t be reached immediately to comment following Monday’s bombing.

After the blast, bystanders and hospital staff rushed away some of the wounded on stretchers while others hugged each other and wept. At least two news cameramen, who went to the hospital to report on the lawyer’s assassination, were among the dead, according to their employers, Aaj News and Dawn News.

“I turned around and saw dead bodies, burned bodies and pieces of flesh everywhere,” said Shah Muhammad Jatoi, an officer of the Balochistan Bar Council, who was at the hospital but escaped serious injury. “The cream of Balochistan’s lawyers has been martyred. The cream. That’s the scale of the loss. It’s the kind of loss you can’t ever recover from.”

It is customary in Pakistan when someone dies for mourners to rush to the body. The dead are brought to the hospital for certification, so an attack on a senior member of a close-knit group such as lawyers was likely to draw a crowd.

The U.S. condemned the attack and expressed determination to continue working with Pakistan to confront terrorism.

“Terrorists targeted a hospital, as well as the judiciary and the media, two of the most important pillars of every democracy,” the State Department said in a statement.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also condemned the violence, and ordered increased security in Balochistan.

“[The] last three years have seen improvement in peace restoration in Balochistan and this sad incident cannot affect the resolve of the nation,” Mr. Sharif said in a statement. He said there was “no doubt in my mind” that Pakistan’s enemies were seeking to disrupt the China-Pakistan economic corridor.

Write to Saeed Shah at saeed.shah@wsj.com

Copyright 2016. Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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00573704
Last Western Prisoner Leaves Afghanistan After Pardon
Robert Langdon was held in high-security facility for seven years
By Jessica Donati
The Wall Street Journal. Online Edition. Thursday, August 17, y. -=-

The last Western prisoner held in an Afghan prison was flying home to Australia on Monday after seven years in a high-security facility he shared with al Qaeda and Taliban inmates.

Robert Langdon, a 44-year-old Australian security contractor, was initially sentenced to death for shooting an Afghan colleague, setting fire to his body and fleeing to the airport, where he was arrested. Mr. Langdon, who was working for the U.S. military, claimed he was wrongly convicted and didn’t get to present a proper defense during three trials.

Afghan authorities later reduced his sentence, and President Ashraf Ghani pardoned him in July. Mr. Ghani’s office confirmed the pardon but didn’t comment further on a list of alleged abuses.

In a series of interviews from his prison cell and following his release on Aug. 2, Mr. Langdon said he passed on tips about al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners to the Australian Embassy while in prison. The embassy said that it doesn’t comment on private discussions with consular clients but that it provided consular assistance and raised his case often with Afghan officials.

Mr. Langdon said he contemplated suicide during the years of incarceration.

“I don’t feel anything anymore,” he said after his release. “I’m numb to everything now.…I’m out. I’ll take it a day at a time, as I have done for years,” he added. “Too much has happened to me.”

The U.S. relied heavily on private security companies in its military intervention in Afghanistan, and the case reflected the perils that can exist for those who work for foreign forces if hey get caught up in Afghanistan’s justice system.

During his time in prison, Mr. Langdon said he was attacked by other inmates because he was a foreigner. In the final months of his incarceration, he lived in a dark, grimy cell that stank of sewage. He had a smuggled phone, an improvised blade and had locked himself in his cell with a padlock for security.

Mr. Langdon said inmates in Kabul’s Pul-e-Charkhi prison were groomed for attacks during their detention by al Qaeda and Taliban members.

He described his conversations with members of al Qaeda who were held in the same maximum-security cellblock and tried to convert him to Islam. The men were well-educated and spoke excellent English, he recalled, preying on young inmates with talk of paradise.

“They would try to twist your mind,” Mr. Langdon said. “They would get hold of people and turn them into living bombs.”

Three courts sentenced Mr. Langdon to death in 2009 for shooting the Afghan security contractor after an argument over whether to continue when their U.S. military convoy was attacked on the outskirts of Kabul, according to both witnesses and Mr. Langdon.

The conviction was based on testimony by Afghan guards who worked for the same U.S.-based security company that Mr. Langdon worked for—Four Horsemen International.

The statements, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, said Mr. Langdon shot Karimullah, who went by one name, and then ordered the guards to put his body in the trunk and set fire to it, staging the scene to make appear as if they had been ambushed. They said they saw the car burning with Mr. Karimullah’s body still inside.

ENLARGE

Mr. Langdon said in the series of interviews that he fired in self-defense because Mr. Karimullah was waving a gun at him. He opened the car trunk to put the body inside for the return to Kabul and discovered it was full of heroin.

He claimed that he ordered the guards to set the car on fire after finding heroin there and that they accidentally left the body in the trunk when it ignited—an act of desecration under Islamic law and a major factor in Mr. Langdon’s death sentence.

Mr. Langdon claimed that his first court hearing in 2009 was over in minutes and that no evidence or witnesses were produced apart from the written statements of the three witnesses. Two of the witness statements were virtually identical, according to copies reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

He also said he hadn’t been provided with a competent translator and didn’t know what was going on in court. He didn’t testify in the case.