We’re not happy…!

When one of my IT support engineers advises a user to power off and restart his or her computer, my reckoning is that this is pretty sage advice. The strong probability is that the user has by this point issued such a convoluted and illogical set of instructions to the poor machine that it has completely tied itself in knots and only a full reset will restore normal service. The other possibility – that the problem is caused by the vagaries of the software products of our major computer corporations – will keep for a future post.

It is a different matter, however, when the captain of an Airbus A330 – sitting on the tarmac at Calgary for well over an hour with full complement on board – shuts the whole aircraft down to complete darkness three times in an effort to restart a recalcitrant computer. Despite the fact that the machine in question merely powered the entertainment system this extended procedure naturally did not fill the assembly with confidence, any more than did the pair of puzzled looking mechanics who wandered the length of the aisle – the ‘engineer’ clutching a screwdriver and the ‘oily rag’ keeping his place by means of a grubby finger in a vast orange reference manual. Hmmm!

Their efforts – you will be unsurprised to read – were not successful. The flight consequently suffered a total lack of entertainment (the stewardesses declining the suggestion of one male passenger that they dance for us instead) and had no reading lights! I was not particularly bothered by the lack of movies and so forth – I rarely watch them in flight in any case – but as I am a poor sleeper in transit the inability to read for the eight hour duration of the flight was pretty frustrating.

Fortunately the Galaxy Note was fully operational and I was thus able to compose this somewhat irritable diatribe for later posting.

Way to go, Air Canada…