The two biggest US airlines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, were down this past week and the festive travelling season has barely started. This has become a recurring seasonal problem, preventing thousands of people around the world from seeing their family for Christmas.
Bill Curtis, the chief scientist at CAST, which finds software flaws for large corporations, explains why poor airline IT infrastructures create headlines each year.
Bill Curtis, Chief Scientist at CAST:
“Airline computers juggle multiple systems that must interact to control gate, reservations, ticketing and frequent flyers. Each of these pieces may have been written separately by different companies. Even if an airline has back-up systems, the software running those likely has the same coding flaw.”
