Hello, I'm the author! On our first cross-Atlantic trip as a family, United Airlines failed to issue my baby daughter a ticket. Then on the way back, Lufthansa lost all track of her on the reservation.
As a software engineer with an interest in legacy systems, I couldn’t resist trying to reverse engineer the bug. I came up with a theory, and along the way uncovered some fascinating aspects of the international messaging standard — it turns out that in the reservation data model, lap infants are modeled as a “special service request” (`SSR INFT`) rather than a full passenger. This is the same field used for vegetarian meals (`SSR VLML`) and bulky sports equipment (`SSR SPEQ`).
I’ve never worked at an airline or in the aviation industry more broadly. I pulled together this investigation from public sources. If you work in aviation, I’d love to hear from you! What is the real issue?
Hello, I'm the author! On our first cross-Atlantic trip as a family, United Airlines failed to issue my baby daughter a ticket. Then on the way back, Lufthansa lost all track of her on the reservation.
As a software engineer with an interest in legacy systems, I couldn’t resist trying to reverse engineer the bug. I came up with a theory, and along the way uncovered some fascinating aspects of the international messaging standard — it turns out that in the reservation data model, lap infants are modeled as a “special service request” (`SSR INFT`) rather than a full passenger. This is the same field used for vegetarian meals (`SSR VLML`) and bulky sports equipment (`SSR SPEQ`).
I’ve never worked at an airline or in the aviation industry more broadly. I pulled together this investigation from public sources. If you work in aviation, I’d love to hear from you! What is the real issue?
I would call this a feature, not a bug.