For the second time in as many months, the QTpod system of self-serve avgas kiosks will be shut down for server maintenance starting at 8 p.m. EST tonight (Feb.20). The pumps are supposed to go back on seven hours later at 3 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, but a similar server maintenance shutdown in early December went on for two days. It’s the billing software that’s being worked on and the pumps can be operated manually, but the sales won’t be recorded and the inventory won’t be adjusted. Fuel sellers at about 1,000 airports were notified about the service interruption on Wednesday, which one QTpod operator says isn’t long enough. The operator told AvBrief QTpods, which is owned by Signature, should have contingencies for the server maintenance episodes.
“I am pushing back very hard on QTpod to ensure they have a hot spare server instance that they can revert to if the update doesn’t go well,” the fuel seller told AvBrief. “I’m also asking them to give us at least a week notice so we can put signs on our self-serves rather than the two days’ notice they just gave us. Finally, I’m asking them to not start this at 8 p.m. EST (that’s only 5 p.m. PST) … much too early on the second busiest day of the week for self-serves. Friday and Saturday are the busiest days.”
Again?!? If I was doing maintenance on a production server that took the business offline unexpectedly for days, I would expect to be fired. I would also expect to be fired if I took down systems for scheduled maintenance during the busiest time of the week, as they are doing. There are methods in IT to make this kind of thing not happen, and not require hours/days of downtime for system maintenance. Clearly this company is not employing those methods.
Yep! Even if this is a “must-take-Prod-offline” situation, this should probably/ideally be done more like 1AM EST to 8AM EST on a Tuesday night / Wednesday morning.
Seems like doing it on a Tuesday night (or any other weeknight) at 1AM Eastern with a week’s notice might be a little bit better for the fuel sellers who are relying on the income and the pilots who are relying on the fuel.
The FBOs must love this, maybe even encourage it as they stand to make an extra $0.50 to skies the limit per gallon on FS while SS is down.
I would think that any responsible FBO would do the opposite: Park a full-service truck near the out-of-service QTpod station, for taxi-up service. Yes, each transaction would be slower because it would not be self-service, but pilots needing fuel should be willing to be patient to get a fill-up.
After all, it’s not the FBO’s fault, except perhaps the decision to go with QTpod in the first place. They will get brownie-points for anything they can do to mitigate such an irresponsible decision.
As a retired computer systems support engineer, such a decision would have been unthinkable, absent an apocalyptic failure in the machine room.
Many places have no FS alternative. I got caught by this on an Angel Flight and ended up renting a car. QT needs a manual backup especially when they are the only game in town.