"Alaska joined the long list of airlines forced to ground their planes because of IT outages in recent years. Millions of Americans will fly during the holidays. Every one of those flights depends on complex computer systems to manage the crew, assign the seats, and more. Occasionally, those systems fail and when they do, they can ground an entire airline."
"The industry is unusual, he says, because there is a lack of commercially available software tools for much of what airlines do. Airlines either have to build their own systems, or cobble them together from multiple vendors. "The challenge is when one falls apart, it's cascading pretty quick," says Sundaram, who now runs the venture capital fund Utpata Ventures. "All it takes is 100 flights to be cancelled (to) completely shut down the entire network.""
An Alaska Airlines IT outage in July forced passengers off a plane and led to hundreds of flight cancellations from Seattle-Tacoma, causing overwhelmed baggage and customer service operations and widespread misinformation. Airline operations rely on complex, interconnected computer systems to manage crews, seating, and more, and occasional failures can ground entire carriers. The industry lacks widely available commercial software for many functions, leading airlines to build proprietary systems or integrate multiple vendors, increasing fragility. Cascading effects can rapidly disrupt networks; even cancellations of around 100 flights can threaten a carrier's whole operation.
Read at www.npr.org
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