So there are many things to talk about,as usual. But I think this episode will resonate with all of us. Because we all fly, and fortunately, I only fly a couple of times a year. American Airlines glitch exposes fragile system.
Yesterday, American Airlines grounded all their flights. However, this wasn’t because of weather, terrorism or crime. It was due to a computer glitch and IT service failure. They felt the outage nationwide. This is especially true in their busy airports, like Chicago O’Hare and Minneapolis/St. Paul. You can bet, it didn’t take long before complaints flew and tempers flared.
But there is some good news. This IT support outage didn’t last very long. The operating system and dispatch went out around 2:05 yesterday EST. However, by 2:45 EST, they fixed the problems and all operations ran as normal. They also did a good job coordinating with the FAA to handle this ground stoppage. One more piece of good news. They didn’t have to cancel any flights because of this. In fact, they only delayed nine flights because of this stoppage. And from what I’m reading, there was no physical violence or incidents or uprisings in the wake of this glitch.
So what? Why do I write about this? To show you how the American Airlines glitch exposes a fragile system. Yes, it only lasted 40 minutes, thank goodness.? I do applaud American Airlines and the FAA for correcting the problem quickly before it got out of hand. But during the glitch, there was no way the passengers could have know that. For all they knew, this could have lasted for hours. I hate to say it, but American Airlines passengers got lucky yesterday. In recent years, a lot of airline glitches got a lot worse. Not only that, what if somebody hacks into the system and holds it for ransom? I’m not trying to scare anybody. But the airline industry and the government needs to do something prevent, or at least minimize, these glitches. But what though?