Visiting China is an eye opener culturally and economically. It is a rapidly developing country and it appears that special interest groups do not get in the way of progress. Perhaps it was the same way when America was building the Hoover Dam or the Interstate Highway system. I was quite impressed with aviation in China. We took five flights within the country. Not sure how many airlines they have in total — the Air Travel Guide for China lists seven. The ones we used all had new aircraft, they took off and landed on time, and the flight attendants were young, friendly and efficient. You had the feeling they really cared about your comfort. While U.S. airlines have eliminated pillows and blankets in economy seating, the Chinese airlines seemed to have an unlimited supply. Every flight, even if 45 minutes, had food. Check-in and security lines moved efficiently even though the airports and the number of people in them were huge. There are various claims made about airports but I don’t think there is any debate that Beijing will soon be the largest — and take just three years to complete.

In the U.S., we are very fortunate to have a transportation system that is highly reliable and gets us to where we want to go in an amazingly short time. The travel industry is a complex one and there is a huge legacy of process, management systems, and technology that makes it difficult to be as flexible and nimble as we all would like. The Chinese do not have all the legacy baggage — no pun intended. Having offered that perspective, it is still at times incredible what we put up with.

The return flight from Beijing actually pulled away from the gate twenty minutes early, took off right on time, and landed at Newark Liberty International Airport exactly on schedule. After the plane sat on the tarmac for a few minutes, the captain announced that there would be a hold while they “waited for a gate assignment”. The few minutes turned out to be ninety minutes. Someone knew for at least twelve hours when the flight would land yet there was no assigned place for it to go after landing. Apparently there was a mechanical problem with one of the planes that was occupying the space assigned to our plane. Since it was an international flight the plane needed to go to a certain terminal. Could we have been placed on a bus and be taken to that terminal? Newark is a very large airport and you would think there would be some way to park the plane and get the passengers to immigration. Could the problem have been an information problem? Could it be that that the flight arrival system and the gate scheduling system do not communicate?
Being a pilot myself, I feel confident in the men and women in the cockpit of an airline aircraft. Knowing a bit about the FAA regulations, I feel confident in the procedures for flying and safety inspections. When it comes to information oriented aspects of the airline industry I am much less confident. The lack of systems and applications integration becomes so painfully obvious. At times a plane gets to the gate on time but there is no one there to open the door. Another information breakdown? Perhaps the person was overworked and busy managing another flight but you certainly get the feeling that better information flow could make the airplane and people “flows” work better.

Japan Airlines has been using message queuing technology for more than ten years to enable their flight arrival system and their gate scheduling system to communicate. Message queuing technology can enable two (or more) incompatible systems to exchange messages so that things can be coordinated. Today’s Service Oriented Architecture makes it much easier than ten years ago and it is very hard to justify having systems that don’t communicate with each other (or a solid plan to get there).

I am sure many people could top the tarmac story from Newark but I doubt if anyone could top the Fire Truck incident though!