26.09.2024 Personal

Learning From a Forced Offline Period

As many of you may have heard, I was mostly offline for a matter of several weeks, especially with very limited access to LinkedIn, but also to my mail. My communication was mostly forced back to phone and digital calls (WhatsApp, Google Meet mostly). And to my own surprise, it turned out a far more productive six weeks than before!

To return to the digital world, this week I got also had to reinstall my laptop and review my mails 🫣 With additional learning curves.

e-Mail

Again, I assume it’s something you heard from me before. For many years now, I restricted myself to 10 (ten) mailing lists. The RSS-feeds mostly dried out anyway. But I found it interesting to how many mailing lists I got “signed up”. No, I didn’t do myself. I simply got added to. Got to be kidding I thought when my (intentionally) unfiltered inbox (previously filtered) for those six weeks flooded my new mail app with 13 000 e-Mails. Excuse me? On about 45 days, that’s more than 280 mails a day?

Well. Running a spam filter over it, after reviewing the spam to filter back ham (good mails incorrectly identified as spam), I added some 30 senders (including mailing lists. For a total of 2.493 “remaining” mails. Still some 55 mails a day. Now filtering mass mailings (mailing lists I thought not to trash but filter into a specific folder), it reduced to 114 mails. Very manageable. Of which I have missed four in those past weeks. Nevertheless, that is less than 1% of the e-Mail that flooded my mailbox. And yes, there are additional counter-measures on the mail-server.

Social Network

Every day, I already limited my activity to LinkedIn to two hours a day. Before. Now those weeks, I made those two hours about every three to four days. And found I may have missed out thousands of “news” in my feed. But I started reaching out one-on-one which turned out rather more productive. Including feedback that those people from my network have not seen much of my posts in the past months. So what was that back in 2020 about the half-life of social media information?

On my few posts, LinkedIn praised for the many “viewers” they got, but the responses have been and remain limited. I’ve reached out before and it’s the ever-same 5-10 people that do respond to my posts.

So if you want to make sure I see your post, please “mention” me. It doesn’t mean I’m not interested, it’s simply that I will try to focus my life more on the real world again and given the flood of posts in my feed, I may simply miss out on it. And if you suddenly find yourself no longer linked-in with me, it’s not out of desinterest, but simply as I haven’t established the personal link. And if you post interesting thoughts, I sure will keep following you. And yes, I will have saved your contact data. You know, mine is on barthel.eu available … I hope 😊

Blog

So what about this blog? The interesting part is, that I have thousands of monthly viewers, but again, the ever-same 5-10 people that do respond to my posts. But long ago, I decided to use the blog to summarize and organize my own thoughts on those topics. So I write in fact for myself. And if you find that helpful for yourself, you’re very welcome.

But yes, the feedback, strong in the beginning (back more than 15 years ago) faded as well.

So recently my WordPress-Theme crashed, no longer being updated. So I replaced it “temporary” with the current sub-optimal one. Let’s see how long that holds, given that I don’t prioritize the blog either…?

My To-Do List

So while no longer prioritizing LinkedIn or the blog, I will keep writing the blog, for the mentioned reason. To summarize and organize my own thoughts. I also plan to experiment with a VLOG. But that’s neither on my priority list. So far I use my little studio for web-calls (WhatsApp, Google Meet, Zoom, etc.). Let’s see how that will go.

I also gained too much “Connections” on LinkedIn. People I that reached out to me, I thought to likely be “valuable” but who turned out “dead baggage”. So I will reach out and see if they respond. Or remove them. They still can follow me, right?

Else, I refocus my personal efforts to people that do communicate with me one-to-one. Digital or face-to-face.

And yes, I think that might be

Food for Thought
Comments welcome!

04.06.2024 Fossil Free Flying, Greenwashing, Impact Investment, SDG Cherry Picking

#greenjacking and #sdgcherrypicking

About #greenjacking

Today I commented on the post by one of the #impactinvestors I happen to like. Just five minutes later I got a call. And we talked for about an hour discussing how the industry uses #sdgcherrypicking to hijack #sustainableideas and turn them into a parody of the original idea. Which we agreed, in turn, is pure #greenwashing. Given that it was about the packaging, we came up rather naturally with the hashtag-word #greenjacking.

My immediate question wasn’t about ChoViva as sustainable chocolate, but about the packaging. Personally, I would have suggested alloy-foil like they packaged the chocolate hearts since back at Air Berlin.

But this packaging seems to us very much as the usual, “fancy” composite laminated paper. Given the amount of such unrecyclable packaging, the amount of #sustainablechocolate in the entire product becomes largely irrelevant. As this produces unrecyclable trash, something anything but “sustainable”.

P.S.: Planet A Foods wrote me after, that they use a “recyclable foil”. So I reached out to my caller, though we agree that again is #greenwishing if not greenwashing, as those foils are not recycled even in Germany but are being either incinerated or dropped to landfills. Usually those “foils” are paper-coated plastic composites that cannot be recycled to date. So we both still believe this to be a case of #greenjacking. We sure wish Planet A Foods success in finding a recyclable packaging for those cookies.

Orig German: Derzeit wird als Verpackungsmaterial eine recyclingfähige Folie eingesetzt. Wir arbeiten mit verschiedenen Verpackungsherstellern daran, eine Verpackung zu entwickeln, die aus Papier besteht und gleichzeitig fettundurchlässig ist. Bisher haben wir keinen Hersteller gefunden, der dies produzieren kann. Für Schokoladenprodukte existiert eine solche Verpackung bereits, für Kekse wird diese aktuell entwickelt. Wir sind aber dran, also bleib gespannt – es ist nur noch eine Frage der Zeit bis die neue Verpackung kommt 🙌
English: Currently, we use recyclable film as packaging material. We are working with various packaging manufacturers to develop packaging that is made of paper and is also impermeable to grease. So far, we have not found a manufacturer that can produce this. Such packaging already exists for chocolate products, and it is currently being developed for biscuits. But we are working on it, so stay tuned – it is only a matter of time before the new packaging arrives 🙌

#sdgcherrypicking

As I used an image on LinkedIn to address #sdgcherrypicking lately, our discussion also circled that #greenjacking as a perfect example for that:

So lets take something 100% sustainable and package it into a “jacket” of 100% unsustainable composite packaging, is hijacking a green idea or #greenjacking.

The #greenwashingindustry vs. #impactinvestors

This is another example how the #greenwashingindustry hijacks #greenideas and turns them into a parody of their original intention. My usual example of #greenwashed “novel ideas” that proof as #panaceadistractions, or those fancy (fashionable?) green IT and #greentech investments that have an energy footprint that they expect to buy from the grid and compensate with carbon-certificates is now having another example.

Other examples are Delivery Hero, Uber and the likes, making big business but paying their most important “riders” minimum wage (or even less).

And yes, we also discussed the funding of Kolibri and why I keep explaining why we have to do this “holistic”. Either right or wrong. If you want to do it right, a holistic approach is the thing to do. i.e. we couldn’t make fossil-free flying a business case nor realistically happen within 10 years by waiting for “the industry” to provide us with enough and affordable SynFuel. But thinking outside those boxes and looking how we can make this profitable and possible, it’s really a no-brainer.

So my recommendation to #impactinvestors and those armies of investors who want to be … Make sure you look at the entire life-cycle. And make sure those fancy #sustainablechocolate cookies are being packaged in a recyclable way and not into #unrecyclablecomposites.

Food for Thought
Thanks for Sharing…

Note 1: The SDG Cherry Picking image may be used “as is” (ND > no derivates) including the reference to KJ Pargeter (for the robots), having kindly approved that use.
Note 2: The ChoViva chocolate is vegan, but the cookie dough contains whey powder, so not vegan… That also was an issue for discussion 😳

23.05.2024 Personal, Values

Throwback Thursday. An Anecdote from the Dawn of Online Travel

So let me use “Throwback Thursday” to tell my view of a story from the dawn of the online travel era.

Allow me to give the necessary background. Many of my friends know bits and pieces.

Getting in Touch with Aviation IT

While this is so long ago, many in our industry have forgotten that SABRE was the first computerized global network that allowed us long before the World Wide Web to go into a travel agency somewhere and book flights, later hotels and other travel services on the other side of the world. When I entered the industry back in 1987 at American Airlines, it was pioneering days still. From an airline office in Frankfurt, soon later we had the first travel agencies using SABRE, aside the predominant “START system” in Germany. Though back then, travel agents became data interface managers. Learning to hack the system using a myriad of strange codes… Anyone recalls “Remarks-Messaging”? Queues, PNR Histories or AIRIMP?

From Airline to Travel IT

It was five years later, back in 1992 that as an established expert for “CRS” I joined German Amadeus-predecessor “START” as the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for System One and Sabre. At the time, Start as an early “Windows-like tool” for the German travel industry combined multiple systems like the Lufthansa CRS inventory system (something like Sabre), German Rail, Tour Operator TUI and several other travel product providers in a single system. At that time, the launch of Amadeus was imminent and following the takeover of most Sabre staff into the new Start Amadeus company structure, suddenly that deal failed. Surprise surprise.

Together with a colleague I became responsible point of contact for airlines, managing, explaining and mitigating the “booking discrepancies” in a pre-online world, when bookings were transferred by teletype (a telex like, but automated system), not in real time. Only inside Amadeus, real time was “normal”. After some years, the internal network of which I wasn’t part of established a “Product Management Flight”, taking over my colleagues and my responsibilities… By the time I’ve become a member of the local Airline Sales Representatives Association (ASRA), though that suddenly was considered as an overstepping on my responsibilities. Something I found and find a statement of total bureaucratics’ thinking. Many years later, that was why Henna Inam’s statement resonated so well with me.

Travel Automation

In the meanwhile, I had build a global network, shared my knowledge not only with my airline sales friends, but also on CompuServe, an “online portal”, and there “GO:TRAVPRO”, a group of online travel professionals, where I met one of my mentors in my life, Richard Eastman.

So suddenly degraded from “Mr. Aviation” to “Helpdesk Executive”, I left Amadeus to start a new venture, establishing the first “GDS robotic tools” that automated recurring processes in those travel tools. GDS was the new name for Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and Worldspan, defining themselves as “Global (Travel) Distribution Systems” and not mere (airline) Computer Reservation Systems…

I developed a tool myself that allowed Air Canada to maintain their “information pages” in the GDSs and use the same content for this new “Internet”-thingy. I gave user training to some travel agencies using “AQUA”, a software that automatically checked and improved travel agent bookings, checking for better prices, better connections, improving the response to customer needs. Then one of the moments in life happened.

Airline Sales & e-Commerce

On research for the ASRA on my second “Airline Sales & e-Commerce”-presentation, a series covering GDS, Online Services like AOL or CompuServe, but also already the new “World Wide Web” (WWW), that ran annually for some 15 years, on the WWW which I still then accessed via a then new link by CompuServe, I stumbled across a single form field on a website that called itself the “Internet Travel Network”. It was really pioneering days, the Internet being something for student freaks… The form took a Sabre-command and returned the result, usually a flight availability. Or for the smarter of us also an air fares analysis result.

I discussed this with the late Louis Arnitz, a client of mine on the AQUA-business. And questioning that using a cache system like AQUA used on existing bookings, it should be possible to process a booking “online” through a web interface. In the following year, we developed what was to become Cytric, the first tool that allowed a commercial booking to be done on the Internet. During that process, there’s an anecdote worth a Throwback Thursday…

Online Travel Booking through the Web using Amadeus

In 1996, some four or six weeks before a milestone that changed our industry, we did by mistake do test bookings in the real-world system and booked up about a hundred Lufthansa flights with travelers called Test Tester… While that was far enough in the future and we could resolve the issue with Lufthansa, we were approached by Amadeus, that it was not acceptable to abuse their system like this and they would never, never ever approve of someone doing bookings on Amadeus through a web-page!! No f***ing way! Oh yes, we were in big trouble.

Those four to six weeks later though, we signed with Siemens to implement our tool into their new “Intranet” calling it the “Siemens Travel Net… Siemens, being a top technology partner of Amadeus I must add. Oops. So once in a sudden, Amadeus was “convinced” by Siemens to allow doing bookings through a webpage. And yes, I recall their “decision” that it’s exceptionally accepted for Siemens Intranet. But don’t we dare to make something like that available to end users!!

A mere year later, there was the Amadeus Global Customer Conference in Barcelona. A close friend in Amadeus, who had helped us pulling that stunt with good ideas on my questions, asked me if I could give a quote they could use to show that they could “do Internet”, some weird development that suddenly hyped. Not that they had any API then, we had developed it all using “screen scraping”, “reading” standardized formats and specifying where the relevant information was, taking it to bits and pieces of typical machine code we then converted to human-interpretable information. So suddenly and to my great surprise, the VP of Amadeus holding the opening keynote quoted some “Juergen Barthel” of “FAO Travel” that we couldn’t have done it without Amadeus proactive help and support. Oh did we have a laugh after 😂

It’s sure noteworthy, that the tool became known as Cytric, with a spin-off known as e-Hotel, used globally and in the end acquired by … Amadeus.

Thinking outside the Box … and beyond

A friend, I came to trust, just recently called me a “visionary”, something I never call myself. When I learned the bells and whistles of “Economics” (Whole Sale & Foreign Sales), my instructor on business education was the boss of a large whole sale logistics center. He taught me to always think things through. What will be the repercussions of buying from the cheapest? Your product will loose in quality. But, he instilled that in me: There is always someone cheaper out there. And he also emphasized and taught me to leave the comfort zone of “we have always done it that way”. We must think outside the box and constantly strive to be better.

Later, I appreciated other role models and mentors, guiding me further down that road. Be it a Bob Crandall, Rita King or Colleen at American, a Hans Gesk and Jerry Kilkelly at Northwest, be it Heinz at Amadeus or Richard on GO:TRAVPRO, Louis Arnitz and Karin Froese in i:FAO, Sean and Alexandre in KDS, and so many others then and since. In turn, I survived the pandemic for being much asked as advisor. Not for day-to-day stuff, but as a crisis manager. As most of them – most people I consider friends – are simply unable to leave their boxes. Stuck in theirs.

Now, I don’t see myself a visionary. That’d be “day-dreaming”. I focus on what’s possible and how to make it happen. That’s why I’m so uncomfortable to so many, why they do call me “visionary”, but also “heretic”, “unorthodox” or “inconvenient”. “Hell Yeah!”… And don’t I let a mistake stop me from doing what’s right!

Food for Thought…

08.02.2024 Aviation, Disruption Management, Values

Aviation and the Learning of Lessons

One of two incidents in aviation questioning the proper application of the "safety first" principle

Since the beginning of flying, aviation learns (often too late) from mistakes. There are some questions rising from the recent debacles at Haneda Airport of an Airbus A350-900 crashing into a Coast Guard aircraft and the Boeing 737-Max9 loosing a dummy door in-flight, that I find noteworthy to share. I will not mention the airlines, considering them victims.

Neither will pour blame over Boeing only again, at Haneda it was an Airbus raising questions. In my humble opinion, think the entire industry has an issue relating to “safety first” recently. And I am afraid, the “commercial focus” on the cost of safety hasn’t ended with the Boeing 737Max debacle with an amok running flight system driving two fully loaded aircraft into the ground just before the Pandemic.

Haneda (Airbus)

An Airbus A350-900 aircraft crashed into a small Japan Coast Guard Dash-8 aircraft at Tokyo Haneda airport, killing all people aboard the Dash-8. No fatalities aboard the Airbus A350-900. Which in hindsight is a miracle to many experts I heard talking the last days.

Airbus Fire Sensors
“After the aircraft came to a stop the cockpit crew was not aware of any fire, however, flight attendants reported fire from the aircraft. The purser went to the cockpit and reported the fire and received instruction to evacuate. Evacuation thus began with the two front exits (left and right) closest to the cockpit. Of the other 6 emergency exits 5 were already in fire, only the left aft exit was still usable. The Intercom malfunctioned, communication from the aft aircraft with the cockpit was thus impossible. As result the aft flight attendants gave up receiving instructions from the cockpit and opened the emergency exit on their own initiative” (Source). Later information says there was a several minutes of delay because of missing or misinformation between cockpit and cabin. So why was the communication malfunctioning in that situation? Why were the pilots unaware? Even Haneda Tower should have informed them instantly of that danger! Why haven’t they? And … and why does the crew have to get approval from the flight deck to evacuate when the aircraft is burst into flames and mortal danger imminent?
Airbus Evac Procedures
Good thing first: The captain [reported only later] was the last one to leave the aircraft. 18 minutes after the aircraft came to a stop. (Source). Wait a minute … 18 Minutes??
Given he aircraft burned out and was on fire rather instantly after the collision, what the heck have those passengers been thinking or doing? I’ve seen my first flight attendant training back in 1989, the emergency training a major part of the training courses. The shouts, day and night in the training center echoing in my ears: “Move it, move it. Get out of my way!”. But 18 minutes? Especially with the issue of 5 out of 8 emergency exits blocked by fire when the purser went to the cockpit to get evac approval?! I believe both Boeing and the airline must have to review the procedures urgently.

Side note. I find it rather telling that there is a lot, a big lot of footage (images, video) of the A350-900, but virtually none of the smaller Dash-8 suffering all the fatalities. At least, I didn’t see or find any? A nice example of “biased news reporting”?

Portland (Boeing)

Above Portland, Oregon (USA), a Boeing 737-Max9 lost a “door plug” in-flight, by sheer luck, not causing any fatality. That this can end far more tragic is burned into my mind, remembering the Aloha Airlines 737 loosing its entire roof shortly after I’ve been there and flying Aloha. A flight attendant being ejected by the decompression. And given the picture, it makes one wonder on the miracle the entire aircraft didn’t break up. One of the many “near-misses” in my life to date. (Wikipedia)

Following the two fatal disasters of 2018+2019 forcing the lengthy grounding and near-bankruptcy of Boeing, the new accident now “naturally” raises the question about the quality of Boeing engineering. In my humble opinion, it does raise the question especially about their constant claim of “Safety First”! With subject matter experts claiming loose screws having caused the door to come apart. What was that about four-eye principle on aircraft construction and all major maintenance?

The door was later found in a teacher’s back yard in Portland Oregon. Just like a phone from the aircraft, the pieces “sailed down”, aerodynamically similar to a Frisbee and landed almost unharmed.

Added 08Feb24: According to preliminary media reporting, there were bolts not just not fastened but missing. Say what??

Is the 737 MAX safe?

Fact: I will neither voluntarily fly, nor allow my immediate family to fly a 737 Max anytime soon. In my humble opinion (IMHO), that aircraft has been misconstructed from the outset and should be shelved for good. It only flies and is approved IMHO for commercial reasons; if it’d be grounded for good, the losses for Boeing can very well proof fatal. To me, it seems the door plug again was a “quick and dirty” solution. On the other end, I won’t “actively” avoid the aircraft, flying was and remains the most secure transport in the world. Just that any incident instantly receives scrutinous media coverage. But yes, booking flights, I usually happen to look at details – and given the choice, avoiding the MAX will be a clear decision making factor for me.

The new incident brings up feedback that I got during the 2019 grounding media uproar. Questions why the “better” Boeing 757 was shelved. It didn’t have the low profile causing engineering complications as there wasn’t enough space under the 737’s wing. Which led to the fatal idea of MCAS, later being the cause for the two fatal crashes killing 346 people. And commercial reasons leading not only to base that on a single sensor (instead of the originally planned three), false readings causing the misinformation of MCAS causing the crashes. But also to the secret implementation not shared with the pilots to avoid potential demand for an “expensive” full type-rating as a new aircraft.

Conclusions

Flight Safety is back to “reactive”. But aircraft engineering must be proactively focused on flight safety! As must be processes, just like the evacuation of aircraft under grim circumstances! Ever since the beginning of flight safety with the Comet-disasters back in the 1950s, aviation “reacted” to disasters. A lesson we also learned with aircraft deicing.

I truly believe that flight safety ain’t a luxury. Just like “service” or “sustainability” being only identified as “cost factors” by finance-focused aviation managers. The recent “cases” are just more examples where things went awry and off track. There are enough cases, not just old, but rather recent, when airlines in distress started to save on the aircraft safety and maintenance. Usually reducing it to the rule-book, “encouraging” their maintenance staff to “look the other way” and to delay parts replacement in questionable situations. Or to have supervisors “sign off” as the additional pair of eyes but in fact reducing it to a single pair of eyes on the job! To safe cost.

Boeing engineers are well advised to return to spend a few more screws and bolts on securing a door plug and to demand four-eye-principle on their construction.
Airbus better finds out, what too so long to evacuate the aircraft.

All else is to be looked at when the incident reports come out. And media is well advised to not just jump the incident, but also report on the final findings. Not 1:1 copying the press release, but questioning them. I think that would be good for (shareholder-value-focused) “managers” to not stray from “Safety First”. As in the end, it’s a trust thing.

Food for Thought
Comments welcome…