Noted in an earlier post, FedEx founder Fred Smith regarded the company's data about its packages as more important than the packages themselves. How can this be? Isn't the reason people use FedEx that they trust the company to handle their treasured packages with a bit more care and accountability than the alternative. As with all worthy epigrams, the seemingly nonsensical and heretical remark contains some deep truths. Of course I expect FedEx to value the actual package. The point is that there is not much real value in taking very good care of the package if you don't actually remember where you put it.
This one certainly strikes home for me. I've certainly experienced the opposite effect. This isn't really a bash on United Airlines - after 18 years I've gotten over it - sort of, although apparently I remember every grim detail so maybe not. But it is a great illustration of Fred Smith's point.
When my wife and I left for the UK on our honeymoon, the trousseau came along in two checked suitcases. I only needed one for my clothes, and you should have no trouble guessing which one of the 3 bags actually made it to the conveyor belt in Heathrow. Bad enough that we had to go purchase emergency gear in one of the most expensive cities in the world, but then because United (yes, you get named here) had absolutely no idea where these bags were, and very little system-wide data visibility, we had to go stopping into their office almost every day for 2 weeks in order to try and get some information and to pick up our daily ration of $20 which of course does not last more than a few minutes in London. Needless to say, my better half was not showing up for multiple nice events in the same outfit, so I was in hock for several nice Peter Jones outfits by the time the trip ended. Ouch. But it gets worse.
The only consistent information we got was that eventually, all the bags they cannot repatriate with their owners are eventually carted off by policy to the Bag Mountain in Chicago, so at least after 3-4 weeks we would know where the bags were ... if, of course, United still had them under control at all. On returning to Dulles airport, it occurred to me to stop by the baggage desk in case there was an update on the situation from within the US where maybe the interoffice communications were more effective. By golly, yes!! The bags had been found and flown off that very morning ... to Chicago. This was actually recorded in the same electronic file that documented the effort made to date to find the bags, so the only thing I could not work out is why (being in possession of my itinerary) they didn't just hold them and give them to me that very day. The airline promised to get them back from Chicago on the next flight and I went home shaking my head. At least the new clothes would last a long time, and indeed they did.
The adventure was't quite over. I got home to find a dozen messages on my answering machine (that'll date you!) beginning an hour BEFORE the original flight saying they had my bags at Dulles and would I be home to accept delivery. What??!! How does THAT not show up in the bag record? So at any time in the prior 2 weeks they could have put the bags on a flight to the UK, which would have saved me a couple of thousand dollars and endless aggravation.
The metadata was definitely more valuable than the actual package.
I don't think there's value in a bunch of comments flaming United Airlines in particular, but I'd love to have your comments with examples of other cases where the metadata is indeed more important than the payload.
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