Volcanic Panic

I planned to attend the Emerging Communications eComm 2010 conference in San Francisco, starting tomorrow. Unfortunately I will not be there due to the #ashtag. All planes are grounded and flights canceled. Truly disappointing, as I was really looking forward to the eComm sessions loaded with unprecedentedly fresh ideas.

Initially my flight was scheduled for Friday, April 16th. Initial connection from KRK to FRA departing at 11AM, then an hour and a half in FRA and the second leg to SFO. The day before I was returning home by car, late in the evening. Got a message about the volcano and the mess it produced... (BTW: Iceland should pay a huge pollution tax now...). But my flight was still showing green. Then the events started to flow:

• April 16th, 00:10:00Z. I get an SMS from Lufthansa staqting my flight had been canceled and suggesting contacting the Lufthansa Service Center in Germany by phone. I was asleep at that time.
• April 16th, 03:35:00Z. I wake up and check the clock on my BlackBerry. There is a new SMS notification icon active. The flight is canceled - I think before opening the message. It is. I try to call the number included in the message. I even do not get a "busy" tone, only the "Call Failed - congestion" message. I try to redial the number several times, but the message repeats. Clearly their call center capacity is exhausted to the point I even cannot reach the IVR. All the incoming trunks must be filled. I try to call the Lufthansa Service Center in Poland, only to hear a message they open at 8AM (06:00:00Z).
• April 16th, 03:45:00Z. I try to look up some other service desk numbers on the lufthansa.com web site. But the web site is down, only showing the IBM WebSphere portal headers. This must be really bad - I think to myself. People desperately look for any information and all systems are down due to overload.
• April 16th, 03:50:00Z. I find the number to the British Lufthansa Office in my Blackberry address book. Expecting long waiting time, to save on the phone bill, I call UK using Skype. The IVR answers and I keep on waiting (couldn't the system say the estimated waiting time?). After 50 minutes on line the call disconnects due to "insufficient funds". Strange. My Skype is set up to automatically top up using PayPal, when the account balance drops below 2 EUR. So it should recharge, but it did not.
  
• April 16th, 04:40:00Z. I call my bank (my PayPal is linked to my credit card) to ask if they have something to do with Skype not recharging. Ah yes - they say - it is our anti-fraud system that kicks in... It let two transactions in a row, but blocked the third one. Thank you Bank, I have just lost a precious hour, not to mention EUR 20 I paid waiting on the line to the Lufthansa service center in the UK.
• April 16th, 04:50:00Z. I check the lufthansa.com and it is working. I am able to get a list of phone numbers to service centers around the world.
• April 16th, 04:52:00Z. I call the Lufhansa office in India using skype. But this a bad idea. I quickly realize the Indian English may be difficult for me and the waiting time may be long (it is the middle of the day in India).
• April 16th, 04:53:00Z. I call the Lufhansa office in the USA. It is midnight over there, so I expect reasonable waiting time. The good news is the Skype call to 1-800 is free. So at least my bank will not mess up with this call. I switch the call to speakerphone and go take a shower.
  
• April 16th, 05:59:40Z. I am still waiting on the line to the US office. In the meantime I try to call the local Polish office, still getting a message they open at 8AM (06:00:00Z).
• April 16th, 06:00:05Z. I redial the Polish office only to get the 'Call failed - congestion" message I was getting trying to call the German office two hours ago.
• April 16th, 06:20:00Z. My US call waiting in line is answered. With a help of an agent, I rebook my flight to Sunday.
• April 16th, 18:00:00Z. Saturday flights are all canceled. Good I re-booked for Sunday - I thought.
• April 17th, 14:00:00Z. I see the late evening flight from MUC to KRK is canceled. This means the plane will not be in KRK to take off on Sunday morning.
• April 17th, 14:05:00Z. I try to call the Polish office. Congestion. Call the US office via Skype. After 45 minutes I am talking to an agent. He says there are no seats available on any flight on Monday. Sunday from MUC to SFO is the only option. And it is not cancelled. I need to get to Munich somehow.
• April 17th, 15:00:00Z. I go to the train station to buy a ticket to Munich via Vienna. There is a very long line to the international counters. But they have some tickets left (after two hours in line). I come back home, finish packing things. My train leaves at 22:00:00Z.
• April 17th, 21:00:00Z. I check the Munich Airport web site again. The Sunday SFO flight was one of a few not canceled. But now it shows as canceled.
• April 17th, 21:05:00Z. I call the US office via Skype again. After just 15 minutes I am talking to an agent. She offers me a flight on April 22nd. Too late. I cancel my trip.

Retrospective. I wonder how many people were left stranded just because the had not had any access to relevant flight information. It is really ridiculous such simple processes as rebooking to the next available flight are not available via Internet. You have to call a live agent, who really gives you two options: fly the next available flight or cancel. I think 80% of cases would be solved this way. But no. They ask you to call a number that is simply not available, when too many people are calling. Even worse. The web servers are not scaled enough to service much higher traffic. Yeah I know - operating costs. But what are the costs of a couple of machines, compared to overcrowded service desks and call centers and customers left stranded...? It is clear someone should realize people know how to use the Internet, they have Internet access, either at home or on the road via their smartphones. Internet has been DESIGNED to keep working when all other means of communications fail. It is where most of us go in case of wide - reaching state of emergency, looking for information. It is really time to plan the capacity to handle traffic in such cases. It will be much more cost effective than scaling existing call centers 10-fold. Some may say hardware is expensive so we will not be planning for emergency floods. But there is virtualization. What would it cost Lufthansa to keep a sufficient number of hibernated virtual machines on Amazon's EC2? Nothing... And such instances could be put to work, should any unexpected event occur. Surely sounds like a simpler plan than having thousands of call center overflow agents waiting on standby. It is about time to rethink the strategy of being accessible to the customers. Technology makes it quite simple. If there is a will, there is a way...