How IT Outages Impact the Aviation World: An Interview with Zach Wichter
Zach Wichter is a seasoned aviation journalist and the writer behind USA Today’s weekly “Cruising Altitude” column, where he explores the latest developments and challenges shaping the airline industry. Before joining USA Today, he covered aviation for The New York Times and The Points Guy, earning a prestigious Gerald Loeb Award for his contributions to the Times’ reporting on the Boeing 737 Max story. His journalism career also includes work with Dateline NBC, New York 1, and Bankrate.com. A graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Wichter brings deep insight and curiosity to his coverage of air travel, aviation technology, and the people who keep the skies moving.
Ethan Romanov: As we look back upon the July 19th global Microsoft IT outage, what do you think contributed the most to the incident that occurred, and what lesson should be learned from this?
Zach Wichter: From a very large perspective, I think this outage showed us a lot about the way that large companies have come to rely on technology and shows how a single system that becomes really intertwined in every company’s day-to-day activities, if it goes down, we see problems. I mean, obviously this was a major one, and we saw a lot of issues across industries, not just airlines, but whenever companies rely too much on one piece of software or something for their operations, then if it goes out, that causes a problem. What’s interesting from the airline perspective is airlines sort of historically have redundancies in place, so if this was a safety-critical system, they would have backups in place. The CrowdStrike outage was not going to cause planes to crash because the airline industries prioritize safety as it is the most important. Another thing that was interesting was about how we saw all of these airlines ground their flights because of these IT issues, and they did this from a safety perspective. For example, in theory, the planes were still physically capable of flying, as this outage mostly affected airlines’ reservations and scheduling systems, but they wanted to make sure that they were able to do that safely. They could have done things like hand calculations to calculate who is getting on the flight or the weight and balance calculations, etc. The bottom line is that airlines really prioritize safety, and so when one of their systems goes down and if they’re not able to do things efficiently or in a safe manner as they typically do, the result is that they shut down their operations or scale them back to ensure safety. Actually, you can draw a pretty similar parallel to what we saw this summer at Newark International Airport, which has had some issues with its FAA air traffic control systems. For example, it’s the same kind of thing when air traffic controllers that controlled the airspace around Newark were no longer able to see planes on their radars. Even though there were other procedures in place to keep those planes flying safely, the regulators scaled back the number of flights coming in and out of Newark because they wanted to maintain the highest level of safety. Because of this, I think that’s what we learned from this: as frustrating as it can be when delays happen, it shows that the airlines are prioritizing both efficiency and, more importantly, safety in their operations.
Ethan Romanov: Overall, do you see this outage as a small and isolated accident, or does it point to a bigger systematic risk in how the aviation industry is interlinked with technological infrastructure?
Zach Wichter: What’s especially interesting about airlines is their IT systems are built on much older technology. To contrast, when we use an airline’s app, we see the latest, most advanced features presented to us as consumers. But in the background, airlines are relying on much older technology to undergird their systems. An example I like to use is when you go to the airport, you still see Dot Matrix printers at pretty much every gate, and that’s really the only place I can think of that still uses technology that old. This is because these IT systems were built initially using mainframe computers, and they kept cobbling things onto these older systems. Shifting back, I think the CrowdStrike outage is this really interesting case study where we see that as things get added on, it becomes a little harder to manage. This is because if you’re relying on different generations of technology that need to work together smoothly in order to run successfully, it can be hard to figure out what’s broken or if there is a bottleneck in the IT infrastructure, especially with some of these older systems that keep things from happening efficiently. Once again, I want to emphasize that there is not a safety concern with CrowdStrike, but I do think it’s a really good example of how complex airline IT infrastructure is and how an outage in one small corner of their industry has these ripple effects throughout the entire aviation system.
Ethan Romanov: One way to resolve this issue could be by spreading critical services across multiple platforms instead of relying on a single one like Microsoft. Do you think the aviation industry is willing to move in that direction, or are there any factors inhibiting it? For example, like cost barriers or issues with other operating systems?
Zach Wichter: So I mean, I’m not an IT expert, and so I can’t say exactly why, but what I do know from the reporting that I’ve done is that obviously anytime airlines implement a new IT system, there’s a large cost to that. For example, we saw that with the Southwest Airlines Christmas meltdown a couple years ago. Part of the reason that happened is because they were relying on older crew scheduling software that got overloaded when multiple airline crews were out of place, and that led to this ripple effect in terms of their ability to get their operation restarted after they had this severe weather disruption. Additionally, I think there are also some risks if airlines try to spread their operational technologies across multiple platforms because then you run into issues with data privacy and the possibility that some systems may not talk to each other properly, etc. Overall, the interlinking of the IT industry in aviation, from what I can tell, is definitely a balancing act between doing things in an efficient manner from the IT side but also in a cost-effective manner. This is because airlines answer to their shareholders, and they make sure that they have redundancies in place so that if something does go wrong, the error in their operation doesn’t have to shut down. Basically, there are lots of different factors that go into the decisions that airline executives have to make when they’re deciding on what their IT infrastructure is, and it isn’t a very clear-cut choice necessarily about which product to pick. They think about if product A or B is better, if we should do both, or even how they are going to relate to each other—all of those things.
Ethan Romanov: Airlines changing their policies, uncertainty in aviation safety, and ATC staffing problems have all been really important issues recently. Which of these long-term challenges do you think will shape the future of U.S. aviation the most?
Zach Wichter: Yeah, so I think that those are all very important in their own different ways. First, I want to address the safety component, which is to say that aviation as an industry has always put safety as its most important value. Aviation experts and historians often say something like, “Aviation history is written in blood,” because flying didn’t used to be as safe as it is now. Part of the reason that aviation safety incidents get a lot of attention is because, when they do happen, it’s usually a mass casualty event. It’s not like a car accident where, even in the most severe cases, a relatively limited number of people may have a fatality. In an aviation accident, it could be hundreds of people, and so the industry really tries to learn from all of those incidents and basically improve on its safety record. Right now, we’re in a historically safe period for aviation in America and globally, and obviously the American Airlines incident in Washington this winter was a real outlier. That was a complete tragedy, but statistically speaking, it was anomalous, and flying remains by far the safest way to travel. So, from this broad perspective, aviation safety is probably the biggest and most important thing in the industry because that’s the priority, and they really want to ensure that flying remains safe and continues trending in a safer direction. Now, the interesting thing about FAA staffing is there’s a safety component there as well. The FAA, quite frankly, has been understaffed for years, if not decades. This is something that is pretty well-documented, and administrations on both sides of the aisle have made promises about fixing it. It’s really just a very intractable problem because you can’t just hire someone to be an air traffic controller out of nowhere because it takes a lot of training, and it’s a really specialized job. So staffing up at the FAA is something that can’t happen overnight. Again, the trends seem to be moving in the right direction. The Trump administration made promises that this was a priority, and the Biden administration before them also made moves to try to address what was a sort of net-negative hiring trend at the FAA for many years, where more people were retiring or washing out of the programs than were being hired. This definitely has a safety impact and is being looked at, but it’s not something that will get solved overnight. That said, FAA controllers are professionals, and they all work really hard every day to keep us safe. Their ability to do that, even under the non-ideal circumstances we face now with the understaffing, is really commendable and is proven every day by how safe aviation continues to be. And then the third thing, with airline policies, is sort of separate because there isn’t as much of a safety component there. But I think passengers have come to feel pretty nickel-and-dimed by airlines. There was a time when your ticket always included things like a checked bag, a seat assignment, and probably a meal. Those things have slowly chipped away, and it’s frustrating, especially for older travelers who were used to more inclusive tickets. It’s hard when things get taken away. That said, when adjusted for inflation, airfare is the cheapest it’s ever been, and more people are flying than ever. So, it’s a bit of a trade-off. Many of the people I’ve spoken to have said that, in general, it’s better to have more people flying who can access travel than to have fully inclusive but prohibitively expensive ticket prices. I do think we’ll keep seeing airlines unbundle their fares, though; that doesn’t seem like a trend that’s going away.
Ethan Romanov: Aviation is often described as an industry that reacts more than it innovates. From your perspective, is this true? Or are there examples where the industry has been proactive and ahead?
Zach Wichter: It’s a really interesting question because I do think the aviation industry can be largely pretty reactive. Like I said, they try to learn from every safety incident to improve their track record. In terms of proactivity, though, what’s difficult about aviation is that it’s a highly regulated industry, and for good reason. That’s part of what keeps aviation so safe. These regulations exist so that airlines can’t just change their policies or modify the configuration of their planes overnight, because there needs to be proper testing to ensure everything is done safely. It’s not that airlines don’t want to innovate; it’s just much harder for them to do so. For example, it’s far easier for a car manufacturer to experiment with a new car interior than it is for an airline to make changes to its cabin interiors. I did another story earlier this year about the rollout of Lufthansa’s new business and first-class cabins, and that process took years. They were trying out new features like a touchscreen tablet to control your seat and seat heating and cooling, which are all things that hadn’t previously been implemented on airline seats. Those are all really cool innovations and things passengers will likely come to appreciate, but they took a significant amount of time and investment from the airline to get all the components certified as airworthy by regulators. So, when innovation does happen in aviation, it doesn’t happen nearly as fast as in other industries, because airlines have to navigate all of these regulations.
Ethan Romanov: As someone who has written about aviation for some of the biggest outlets, from The New York Times to The Points Guy, what is one aviation story you’ve covered that was the most unreal and surprising to you, and what made it stick out to you?
Zach Wichter: I’ve gotten to cover a lot of aircraft retirements, and those are always really fun. I went with Delta Air Lines’ last 747 to its storage facility in Arizona, which was an incredible experience. More recently, I covered JetBlue’s retirement of its E190 fleet—probably less exciting for a non-avgeek, but personally meaningful to me. Honestly, though, one of the most unique things I’ve gotten to do was a bit more out of left field. Maybe a year or two ago, I was invited by United Airlines, which was conducting a research flight with NASA to test sustainable aviation fuel emissions. NASA has this flying laboratory that, at the time, was operated by a DC-8, which has since been retired and is now being replaced by a 777. I was on the NASA plane, and it had basically been gutted on the inside and filled with research instruments. We spent the day following a United Airlines Boeing 737 MAX that hadn’t yet gone into service, flying over Montana. The NASA plane flew behind it, going in and out of its contrails to test what particles were present and whether visible contrails were forming. The goal was to study the particulate emissions from sustainable aviation fuel and their contrail-forming properties. What I learned on that mission really surprised me: contrails actually have a greater impact on global warming than the total CO₂ emissions from airplanes, because they reflect heat and light back toward the Earth’s surface. That means reducing contrail formation could significantly lower aviation’s overall warming effect. As a journalist, getting to experience something like that, which is something that most people would never have the chance to see firsthand, was incredible. It was fascinating and fun, but it also reminded me of the responsibility I have to tell these stories accurately.
Ethan Romanov: What advice do you have for the younger generation of students who are interested in entering the aviation industry?
Zach Wichter: For aviation generally, I’m not an aviator, so I’m just sharing what I’ve heard from others who work in the industry. Obviously, it’s a really fun field. Everyone I know who works as a pilot, flight attendant, or in any aviation-related job loves it. You kind of get the bug, if you’re not already an avgeek; once you’re around planes and the industry, it becomes part of who you are. The great thing now is that airlines have a lot of programs, especially for pilots. For several years, there was a pilot shortage in the U.S., so there are now some really great initiatives to encourage young people to come up through the ranks and become pilots at the airlines. If that’s something you’re interested in, it’s definitely worth checking out. For aviation journalism specifically, and journalism more broadly, I love being a journalist. I won’t pretend it’s the easiest or most lucrative career; there are many other industries that compensate you better and are easier to break into. Quite frankly, it probably took me about ten years before I felt like I had solid footing in journalism. From the time I got my first job to when I truly felt established, there were a lot of bumps along the way, and that’s just how this career is. Still, I feel incredibly lucky to get to do it. Whether it’s aviation or another topic you’re passionate about, if you’re interested in becoming a journalist, the best way to do it is by reporting on something you care deeply about. That way, you’re telling stories about something you already understand and connect with, and I think that makes your reporting much stronger.
