In Brief: Cyber Attack Leaves Thousands of Travelers Stranded Over the Weekend
Jesse Tabit June 22, 2015
LOT Polish Airlines was forced to cancel nearly 10 flights Sunday, leaving 1,400 passengers stranded after an alleged cyber attack at Warsaw Chopin Airport (WAW). Adrian Kubicki, a spokesman for LOT, claims the attacks paralyzed the airline’s computers at its main hub. In a statement, LOT said: “As a result (of the attack), we’re not able to create flight plans and outbound flights from Warsaw are not able to depart.”
The system’s issues were resolved in around five hours. Because they use state-of-the-art systems, Kubikci said that the hacks could be a threat to others in the industry. Airline CEO Sebastian Mikosz echoed that statement, telling Reuters, “This is an industry problem on a much wider scale, and for sure we have to give it more attention.”
For more information on this story, visit USA Today.
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The headline says "thousands", LOT did not. Most were accommodate on other flights or bussed to their destinations (40% of the flight pairs affected were very short-haul domestic) even before the IT issue was resolved. Only two of the 60% remaining international destinations served are monopoly routes, and they all have easy one-stop alternates, while most see multiple LOT flights a day, so reaccommodating passengers was not all that hard. There are often just as many flights cancelled e.g. due to weather on especially bad weeks. This made headlines only because of the cause, which was apparently unprecedented and leaving open safety issues industrywide.
The headline says "thousands" were stranded. I take that to mean at least two thousand. But the article says only 1,400 were stranded. And were they really ALL stranded? Presumably, for a lot of those passengers, Warsaw is where they live.