Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 8.1
Comair canceled all of its flights on Christmas Day 2004 because the computer
system that assigned crews to flights failed.
(AP photo/Al Behrman, file)
A new laboratory computer system at Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center
became backlogged the day after it was turned on. For several hours on both April 16 and
April 17, 2003, emergency room doctors told the County of Los Angeles to stop sending
ambulances, because the doctors could not get access to the laboratory results they
needed. “It's almost like practicing Third World medicine,” said Dr. Amanda Garner.
“We rely so much on our computers and our fast-world technology that we were almost
blinded” [18].
Comair, a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, canceled all 1,100 of its flights on Christ-
mas Day 2004 because the computer system that assigns crews to flights stopped running
(Figure 8.1). Airline officials said the software could not handle the large number of
flight cancellations caused by bad weather on December 23 and 24. About 30,000 trav-
elers in 118 cities were affected by the flight cancellations [19].
In August 2005, the passengers on a Malaysia Airlines flight from Perth, Australia, to
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, suddenly found themselves on a roller coaster-like ride seven
miles above the Indian Ocean. When the Boeing 777 unexpectedly began a rapid climb,
the pilot disconnected the autopilot, but it took him 45 seconds to regain control of the
jet. The plane zoomed upward, downward, and then upward a second time before lev-
eling out. After an investigation, Boeing reported that a software error had caused the
flight computers to receive faulty information about the plane's speed and acceleration.
In addition, another error had caused the flight computers to fail to respond immedi-
ately to the pilot's commands [20].
