US: Government auditor to look into airline IT disruptions: letter

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) will examine a series of technology failures at major airlines that resulted in thousands of flight cancellations, according to a letter seen by Reuters. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida sought the probe in August after a series of airline technology failures. In August 2016, Delta was forced to ground 2,000 flights after a small fire resulted in a “massive failure” at the airline’s technology centre. Other disruptions include one that prompted Southwest to cancel over 2,000 flights in 2016 and two outages at United Continental. “The issue of airline IT system crashes is serious and appears to be getting worse,” Nelson wrote in a letter to GAO in August, asking that the office looks into the impact of those IT crashes on passengers and asks for regulatory or legislative suggestions aimed at preventing outages. <br/>