As most of you already know, Loyola’s sixth annual MBA study tour to Chile was cancelled due to the massive earthquake last week. Kim and I were both on this trip along with twenty-six other students and two professors. We actually almost made it to Chile; we were roughly three hours from landing in Santiago (we were over Ecuador when the plane turned around) when the earthquake struck, ending our study tour before it began. Since we underwent such an immense deal of preparation, and came so close to going, I thought I would talk about some of the IT-related issues I saw on our ‘almost’ trip.
We first found out about the earthquake at 3:30am ET, when the pilot woke all the passengers, announcing that we couldn’t lant in Chile because the airport was no longer functional. The runway and control tower had been damaged due to a “significant earthquake” according to the pilot. At this point, I realized how reliant on information technology we really were in that isolated Boeing 767 over South America. Thankfully, the vast communication networks in place not only alerted our airline of the disaster nearly immediately, but also allowed the airline and pilot to determine the best airport at which we could land, as the plane was running low on fuel. Fortunately, the combination of on-board IT which was monitoring our geographic position as well as our fuel consumption, in conjunction with the many air-traffic control measures in the U.S. and abroad, allowed the pilot to safely return the plane to Miami. There was very little time to make this vital decision, which was obviously facilitated by an incredibly extensive IT infrastructure.
Once we landed in Miami, many of the passengers on board the flight, namely our instructors and the native Chileans trying to fly home, were desperately trying to communicate with loved ones and friends in Chile. At this point, it became apparent the cell phones and landline phones were both completely nonfunctional in Chile’s major cities. In fact, the only communication devices which appeared to be working were Blackberry phones. The feeling of not being able to communicate was tremendously humbling. Suddenly I became quite apparent that even a relatively less technologically advanced area such as Chile still had a massive investment and reliance on information technology for everyday living.
In the end, I think it was the moments in which we expected IT systems to facilitate processes, and the technology wasn’t available, which I remember the most. There were many of these on this trip due to the sudden unpredictability of the situation, but the one that stands out the most occurred in the Miami airport. There, we were re-boarding the airplane, heading back to Dallas. Since this was an unplanned trip, the airline had no way to scan our tickets to let us back on the airplane. Instead, the employees had to manually check each of our previous tickets and identification before boarding. This simple task seemed to take forever, and it was all caused by the lack of a simple IT system which we all take for granted on a daily basis.
I also blogged about the use of technology on our Chile "trip." It's interesting that we wrote about it from different perspectives. Without my Blackberry I wouldn't have been able to learn about the earthquake on the Internet and make contact with family before even reaching the gate in Miami.
ReplyDeleteTo your point, what about the fact that we had to fly back to Dallas before going back to BWI. Ideally their system could have gotten us to BWI directly from Miami. But we made it back safe! :)