I've got a bit of a problem with the example of hospital management software. Given the complexity, particularly in the US, of the healthcare system, why expect the software to be "high-quality"? (Whatever that means).
Agreed on the airline management example though. It's insane how patchy that all is.
The US hospital system could do far better simplifying its billing procedures rather than attempting to implement equally complex software to line pockets on both sides.
I have worked with passenger rail transport. Knowing the quirks of that domain, I am quite impressed with air travel software. Anecdotally, I have rarely heard of cases of «Computer says no» in air travel, which are abundant in most other domains.
I was referring to the competing GDS platforms that airlines like Southwest opted not to use. I was trying to be charitable to the author here, because I am partial to how the terminal booking interface just works and allows for almost universal interoperability. You just have to learn how to use it. Of course, there is still greater functionality when using the airline's website directly (dynamic pricing, seat choice), which is "patchy".
One could see it as patchy, when you access an airline's website and before you can do anything useful, you have to load scripts that do who knows what, from 20 third party domains, that have nothing to do with you searching or booking a flight. Basically cobbled together slow as molasses ton of scripts, that probably barely work at all.
They aren’t referring to the client side of this question. Airline websites generally have the quality of any generic corporate IT project…
I assume what the parent was referring to is the backend systems like Sabre that coordinates travel and ticketing between airlines, travel agents, etc. It is a truly ancient system by today’s standards, with origins in the 1960s and mainframes. Systems like this actually have started to limit what airlines can do and how many flights they can manage.
Those user-side scripts have nothing to do with booking the flight. The reservation software is running in a data center somewhere, quite possibly on a mainframe they've been trying to retire for 30 years.
Agreed on the airline management example though. It's insane how patchy that all is.