Skift Take
Old tech is a big part of mass flight cancellations. Maybe Southwest's extreme episode and Wednesday's tech issue of this are a wake-up call across aviation.
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Southwest’s debacle late last year was extreme, but mass cancellations are not unheard of in the industry. Actually, they seem to be somewhat common.
Just last year, Spirit Airlines canceled 2,800 flights over 10 days because of tech problems and staff shortages during bad weather. American Airlines and Southwest also canceled 2,000 flights each within a short timeframe last year. Delta Air Lines canceled more than 3,500 flights over five days during severe weather conditions in April 2017, as another notable example.
To top it all off, thousands of flights across the U.S. were grounded this week because of a computer glitch in a piece of the Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic control technology.
What leads to these issues is always extremely complicated, especially right now with staff shortages during pandemic recovery, but a common thread is that the industry as a whole is operating on outdated tech.
The Delta issue in 2017