The US airline industry was rocked by two, turn-of-the-year technology-related glitches that brought systems to a grinding halt. The first was the meltdown of Southwest Airlines between Christmas and New Year that saw more than 16,700 flights cancelled and which racked up costs starting at US$825 million. The second was the FAA system outage that halted departures nationwide. The US transport authorities are now scrutinising whether airline executives overscheduled flights which under federal law is considered an unfair and deceptive practice. Southwest is only admitting that its systems became stressed from days of disruption across 50 airports due to an unprecedented storm. Southwest has called its performance unacceptable - and has apologised, promising that its US$1 billion programme for IT systems upgrades would now be accelerated.
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