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QTPod Self-Serve Terminal Network Crashes Leaving Hundreds of Airports Without Fuel Over The Weekend

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Saturday morning, May 30th, QTPod's network that processes all of their self-serve units crashed. Hundreds of airports not having mobile fueling trucks or personnel have been left without fuel during the weekend and there is no estimated timeframe when the network will be back online. (www.qtpod.com) Mais...

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sgbelverta
sharon bias 13
Technology is great, until it isn't. Anything that's run by a computer needs a back-up, and a human as a back-up is best. Hopefully this gets resolved quickly.
bsmithair
bsmithair 4
The older QT system seems to be working fine. Just the "new and improved M4000" units are down. So happy our new and improved must have M4000, because "we're no longer going to support" the older units, has not been installed yet.
I love their temporary fix of having you put the machine in manual mode and pay someone to stand around to collect the money until they have the problem worked out. Hmmm, maybe they will reimburse that expence. Or not.
krs
Bob Poberezny 2
Whenever a product is touted as "new and improved", the obvious implication is that the previous version was shit.
djames225
djames225 3
This is what happens when you put all your fuel in 1 basket
billorcutt
William Orcutt 2
The system appears to still be down as of noon today, Tuesday. Anyone have any credible estimate when the system will be back up?
Jfortne
Jfortne 2
I've been getting calls about our supported data networks being down in several locations, and all happen to have these systems on site. Alas, not our networks, but QT itself turns out to be down. According to their rep on the phone, it is a corporate server failure-type of issue, not an in-house one, and they still have no ETA, and no control over the outage unfortunately. They did promise me a call back and I'm happy to relay whatever they tell me.
SamArnold
SamArnold 3
I've never seen one of these QTPod thingys before. We just use conventional BP or Shell self-serve fuel, which rarely fails. You just insert fuel card, enter PIN, fuel plane, go = simple.
What do these QTPod things do different that makes them desirable?
djames225
djames225 2
Screw up...basically its a prepaid system same as Shell self serve except you can manage it via the internet, change the fuel price, monitor sales etc.
DRotten
D Rotten 3
Used sparingly, tech is great! BUT, when it is integrated into EVERY aspect of ones life, it WILL be the down fall of the human race! Planes. trains, auto's, your HOUSE (as in a 'Smart' House), utilities (WATER, gas, elect), people putting their WHOLE life on their cell phones; and the LONG list goes on. When all of these Tech Systems FAIL, and they WILL, MOST of the human race is SCREWED! And 'failure' INCLUDES an EMP! (whether it's 'man-made' or from the Sun!). We're going in the WRONG direction, People!! We need to go BACK to basics! "Just because you CAN, does NOT mean that you SHOULD!".
krs
Bob Poberezny 5
"Welcome aboard TranZap Airline flight 101. This flight is entirely controlled by our computers, there are no pilots. So sit back and relax, nothing can go wrong......go wrong......go wrong.....go wrong.....go wrong.............."
DRotten
D Rotten 3
Right?! lol I mean, really now! OK.....raise your hands.....How many people have had their home computers screw up so many times, that you've lost count?? And people (the morons) will soon be living in 'Smart Cities'? WHAT could POSSIBLY go wrong?! Even ONE 'high tech' ('Smart') building where one needs a code, pass card or BIOMETRICS to even get OUT of the building! If that building is on FIRE, and the 'system' FAILS......you're TOAST (literally)!!
cverbil
cverbil 2
Their network still down as of this morning (Wednesday) Pacific time.
jtpfilms
Jean Paul Lacruz 2
I wonder if QTpod suffered a ransomware attack. Earlier this year (in 2020) Total FBO suffered a ransomware attack, and their system was down for several days. That might be the cause with QTpod as well. Unfortunately QTpod is not answering the phone or giving any information.
leocfi
Leo LeBoeuf 2
The system does not work well. Goes down quite a bit. The terminal will enter incorrect data. Then too why base your business transaction system on a Windows system? Need something more robust and less easily hacked.
djames225
djames225 2
Most POS systems (I use to think it stood for "piece of #2" not "point of sale") are Windows based unfortunately.
If it goes down so much, sounds like QTPod did their own in house system, which is idiotic.
gmplewa
Gary Plewa 0
The two largest retail hacks ever, that hit Home Depot and Target for 1,000,000's of credit card numbers was due in part to Windows. Anyone can buy a copy along with the virus scanners and hack away until they perfect a solution. In the above cases, the hackers simply disguised their own rogue copy of the svchost service, which Windows has many running copies of to do various things. Whats one more copy and who would even notice? They padded it appropriately to pass the virus scanner checksum tests and managed to get it installed on every terminal. This rogue program scanned memory for the easily identified Credit Card MSR Track 2 data string and sent it off to an edge server, also hacked, via ICMP network payloads, and then out to the hacker's systems. This hack went undetected for MONTHS. Now what does this rant have to do with QTPod? When you base a mission critical business system on Windows you have no obscurity, your O/S is an open book and you are vulnerable to an O/S based attack. Clearly the length and breath of QTPods's outage means this was more than a tripped breaker in a computer room. I am thankful my airport still has an M3000 terminal and was unaffected.
madalenanielsen
madalena nielsen 1
QUAND VAT-ON SAVOIR POUR LES VOLS TRANSFERTS A cdg
jmonroe
jmonroe 1
Systems fail all the time, it's the lack of back-up or work around that's concerning. The back-up at our airport was cash or check.
Quirkyfrog
Robert Cowling 1
And they call that 'Next generation'? I'm sure everyone waiting for fuel was so happy to be so well served.

So when is the next next generation coming out?

I worked at a big 10 university, and they had just installed a 'major upgrade' to the campus wide network, that was to 'insure availability and scalability for the future'. It was all 'next generation' stuff. About a month later, the entire campus wide network went down. For HOURS! No email, no registration, no financial aid, no cyclotron, no bookstore, no anything. 'Nice upgrade' was the title of the next published campus newspaper that was then recalled for being 'too harsh on university services'. Um, yeah... It turned out to be a single card in a Cisco router. They had no on campus spares. Cisco had to fly one in from California. Oops...
djames225
djames225 4
Not so much the equipment as it is the way it is installed. A proper upgrade to a campus network should have had triple redundancy built in, especially when a hospital is involved. And if 1 network card in a router took it down, administration best be looking at another vendor to install proper facilities.
OWiseman
Orville Wiseman 1
The outage actually occurred at 11:30 EDT Friday night, as of 11:00 am EDT Monday morning the system is still down. We upgraded four locations earlier this year and spent tens of thousands of dollars doing so for the QTPod in hopes of better serving our clientele. QTPod is affiliated with Epic Fuel who is owned by BBA Aviation, the holding company for Signature Flight Support network of FBO's. Difficult to understand how something like this could continue for over 60 hours given the corporate expertise and capital behind it.
djames225
djames225 5
If it's been going on this long, it wasn't just a system crash. Proper system would, rather should, have redundant backups, and a clean slate reboot should have restored it. So either something has gone terribly wrong or their system stinks.
Quirkyfrog
Robert Cowling 4
Or both. Any system, properly designed, should be able to recover or minimally function if something happens, and people that are able to fix it should be notified. Apparently everything fell apart.

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