Why do airline computer systems fail? What the industry can learn from meltdowns

This year Alaska Airlines joined the long list of airlines forced to ground their planes because of IT outages. Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

Tony Scott had already boarded his flight from Seattle to Dallas back in July when his problems started.

It was about 8 p.m. on a Sunday night when the flight crew asked the passengers to get off the plane. By the next day, Alaska Airlines would cancel hundreds of flights, many of them out of its hub at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

“It was chaos,” Scott

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