Severed fibre optic link causes chaos for Northwest Airlines - Brief Article

Airline Industry Information, March 23, 2000

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2000 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Huge problems were caused for Northwest Airlines on 21 March when a link in its computer network was severed by a utility crew who cut through two US West fibre-optic cables in Eagan, USA.

The accident meant that the carrier's communications were out for about three hours resulting in the cancellation of about 130 flights and an indeterminate number of delays to flights around the world. Reservations systems, baggage information, electronic ticketing and other crucial links were all affected.

A spokesperson for the airline told the Associated Press that no flights had been placed in danger due to the breakdown but that boarding had been suspended during the outage as a precaution until the problem was fixed.

The city of Detroit in the USA was apparently the most affected by the communications outage, with about 30 flights cancelled, while 19 were cancelled at Minneapolis. Other cancellations occurred throughout the rest of Northwest Airlines' markets including Bangkok and Singapore.

The airline's web site was also out of action due to the problem.

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