Glitches Force Airlines to Beef up Tech
Ryan Boyd March 09, 2017
On Wednesday, a House Transportation subcommittee heard several prominent airline executives’ explanations of costly technological glitches and the technological improvements needed to prevent them in the future. Brad Tilden, CEO of Alaska Airlines, claimed that the carrier has quadrupled spending on information technology in order to combat attacks on cybersecurity.
“We have gone from roughly $50 million a year to roughly $200 million spent on IT,” Tilden said.
Consumer advocacy groups, however, believe that carriers should take more responsibility for compensation owed to passengers inconvenienced by outages and glitches.
“Bizarrely, passengers are being punished for the failures of the airlines,” said Charles Leocha, chairman of Travelers United.
“Full refunds should be made available and all airline tickets should be valid for at least a year from the date of the disruption.”
To read more on this story, go to USA Today.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
