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Comment by kzrdude | Hacker News Reader

another if-else block? I'm thinking another database table of banned plane-route combinations, if they don't already have it.

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Ideally, sure, but the article makes it seems like a rare ocurrence. And if their plane maintenance is any indication, I'm not sure their application architecture would be following such best practices.

  And if their plane maintenance is any indication

Delta runs one of the premier maintenance outfits (Delta TechOps) globally. About a quarter of their TechOps business is for outside airlines. So sure if that's any indication their application architecture is probably pretty decent (it's not).

This was an ETOPS flight, yeah? Those come with higher standards for crew training, maintenance, and minimum equipment per the FAA. I wouldn't worry until/unless the FAA starts making noise about revoking Delta's ETOPS certification (which would hurt their ability to fly a bunch of routes and their ability to perform maintenance for e.g. Hawaiian).

This specific thing is a rare occurrence, but “only certain special variant planes can land at this weird airport” (for instance, LCY requires a specific 318 variant) is more common; I’d assume their software can handle all sorts of weird rules.

Seems reasonable that they have some sort of rules engine that tracks this type of thing. A country banning a particular aircraft might be rare but differing environmental and noise laws around the world probably means there are quite a few restrictions on which aircraft can go to which destinations beyond the major reasons like runway size and gate facilities.

> Seems reasonable that they have some sort of rules engine that tracks this type of thing.

Such a rules engine is required for day-to-day ops management of a heterogeneous fleet (e.g. "list nearest airplanes to airport X that can fly non-stop for Y nautical miles to airport Z". Or "create flight plans ensuring that each airplane is certified in both departure & arrival countries"). I doubt hard-coding would be required, as such a system is likely flexible

Clearly we need a micro service, we know that relational databases are not up to this task of telling us facts about related data.

Affinity / Anti-Affinity would be more robust solution and can also support other needs perhaps ?

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