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British Airways Passengers Delayed By Computer Glitch (bbc.com)
Reader rastos1 writes: British Airways told customers that some flights were cancelled on Monday "due to operational reasons." The airline apologized to customers, saying its IT teams were "working to resolve this issue". [...] a professional poker player from London, told the BBC she had queued for a flight in Las Vegas for two and a half hours. "My boarding pass was filled out by hand. Even had a hand-written hand baggage label. Staff were updating us well; The staff... were excellent. The pilot said the delays were due to a computer glitch and apologized profusely."This comes less than a month after Delta Air Lines and Vienna Airport both had their services disrupted due to computer glitches.
You'd be surprised how quick the airlines would be to AVOID admitting computer problems in this case.
Any other company would be blaming this on a hacker or group of hackers, attempting to disrupt a vital service and damage the economy in some sort of nebulous concept of "terrorism." The airlines, on the other hand? It's literally their business to make people feel safe, even when they're not (you'll notice that all of this child groping and delays courtesy of the TSA haven't stopped any drugs from being shipped by airmail, for example). If it were successfully demonstrated that the computers of the major airlines are no more secure than anyone else's (which they aren't), the public might have even less confidence in their assurances of "safety" than they already have.
Hence, "computer glitch." Or to put it another way, "we pinky swear we didn't just get DDoS'ed out of business, nobody broke in and got access to any traveler information. That information is expressly sold to the highest GOVERNMENT bidders ONLY!"