Flight disruptions are always a headache for travelers. But flight disruptions caused by airline IT outages? Those can be another level of stress and chaos, as sometimes carriers aren’t able to reschedule flights for days at a time.?
It’s a phenomenon that seems to be happening more often. Just this summer, there were two high-profile IT system breakdowns, which both caused widespread flight disruptions across the country.
Within weeks of each other in late July and early August, both Alaska Airlines and United Airlines had critical computer systems crash, causing several days of canceled and delayed flights.
Before that, major IT meltdowns happened in 2022, when winter weather caused massive delays and cancellations for Southwest Airlines when the carrier’s technology couldn’t keep up, and to Delta in 2024, when its technology provider CrowdStrike had a sweeping global outage.
Airlines rely on a complex network of computers and software that controls everything from booking reservations and tracking flight times to the weight and balance of planes before takeoff, as well as crew schedules and rest periods.
If any single piece goes down, it can wreak havoc across the airline’s entire system. But often, these delicate networks don’t receive the proper level of maintenance.
“What we do know from the Southwest Airlines holiday debacle in December 2022 is that Southwest's unions had documented how that airline had skimped on investing in upgrading IT systems,” says William McGee, senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project.?
In testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee in February 2023, the president of the Southwest’s pilot union said the IT system had been “a massive, complex operation held together by duct tape and baling wire.”
“That led directly to the largest stranding of passengers by a single airline in US history, more than 2 million,” McGee says. “We also know that much of this has to do with outsourcing, as we saw last year with the CrowdStrike event.”
The issue of widespread software glitches was under scrutiny before the pandemic, with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigating the frequency of airline technology breakdowns. Its report found that there was an airline IT outage about once a month between 2015 and 2019.
“Surprisingly, the IT systems seem to be operating without any government control,” said a 2019 analysis of the GAO report by Travelers United, a consumer advocacy group. “And, whenever these systems fail to function, airlines treat these failures as though they are Acts of God. Passengers are punished just as they are during a major snowstorm or hurricane.”?
Another culprit behind the frequent meltdowns could be the endless string airline mergers over the last decade.
“There's no question that airline industry consolidation has had negative effects on customer service, outsourcing of critical work, and overall investments by airlines to improve their products,” McGee says. “Studies have shown that mergers often create ‘organizational disruptions’ such as IT outages when systems are melded, as was seen after United and Continental merged in 2012.”
Although carriers could—and probably should—invest in streamlining their computer systems, that would only solve part of the problem. There are several other ways regulators and airlines could ensure IT systems are more resilient. “Airlines are at the mercy of their IT providers in many cases,” says a report from Cirium published after the 2024 Crowdstrike outage.
As such, airlines should make sure their IT providers have some skin in the game by creating more stringent agreements, ensuring “IT providers share in the pain and the financial impact that their actions have on their airline customers in terms of operational costs and customer compensation.”
Cirium’s report also suggested that airlines invest in backup systems run by different platform providers that would automatically take over in the event of an outage, as well as run training exercises that simulate an IT outage, so airline staff know exactly what to do and how to communicate during an incident.
Indeed, federal officials requiring airlines to have a plan for when the seemingly inevitable outage does occur would be crucial to preventing such widespread flight disruptions.
“American Economic Liberties Project strongly believes the USDOT needs to mandate that every US airline have an emergency contingency plan for major disruptions, including IT outages,” McGee says. “In far too many cases, airlines have reacted slowly, ineffectively, and without enough regard for passengers. Contingency plans would spell out exactly what needs to be done in such a crisis, and would require training, system upgrades, and back-up plans for responding to the worst case scenarios.”
In many cases, airlines simply fix the software glitch, work on getting flight schedules back on track, and move on. For its part, Southwest said in 2023 that it would invest $1.3 billion on technology projects after its meltdown, a sum 25% higher than it spent in 2019. It also created plans to streamline communications and decisions across departments in the event of another tech meltdown.
In the long run, such investments should help airlines’ bottom lines, too. Southwest reported that its December 2022 meltdown cost $800 million. After the CrowdStrike outage, Delta reported it lost more than half a billion dollars and is currently suing the platform for damages.
As for what passengers can do about the frequent software glitches? The answer is unfortunately not too much, as fliers are “largely powerless in such situations,” according to McGee.
“But while they may not be able to predict how and when such outages will occur, they can respond on their own,” McGee says. “This means being familiar with the airline's Contract of Carriage, especially since IT outages are ‘Act of God/Force Majeure’ events that require additional compensation for passengers. The DOT's Customer Service Dashboard provides a good way to compare and contrast US airline policies on such matters.”
According to the dashboard, nine out of 10 of the biggest US airlines say they will provide hotels, meals, and required transportation to fliers stranded by these types of delays. It might be cold comfort if you’re stranded for days waiting to board a plane, but at least it’s something.
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