RALEIGH, N.C. (WPTF) – A sudden hailstorm slammed into Atlanta’s main travel hub, forcing the diversion of 90 flights and throwing travel plans into chaos across the Southeast. Aviation Analyst Jay Ratliff says it’s one thing when our cars are subjected to a hailstorm but it’s quite another when it involves aircraft.
“You [even] had the airplanes that were on the ground in Atlanta, of course that’s a major hub for delta, and they had 100 airplanes sustain some kind of damage. Of course when that happens the aircraft has to be checked out by a mechanic before they allow it to fly,” said Ratliff.
According to WBTV, Friday, June 27, 731 flights were delayed and 135 were canceled at Charlotte airport. During a busy travel season, taking over 100 airplanes off the schedule is going to cause some problems.
“It was inconvenient for passengers through the weekend, yes, but when you’re dealing with an issue of safety, it’s a needed step by Delta and certainly well done,” said Ratliff.
While hailstorms of this magnitude are not very common, Ratliff says they come on so quickly the airlines don’t have a chance to prepare.
Along with unpredicted hailstorms, a notorious cybercriminal group is taking aim at U.S. airlines—threatening chaos in an already high-stress season for flyers. Ratliff says the group is called ScatteredSpider and came on the scene around two-to-three years ago taking on Las Vegas casinos.
“We’ve had WestJet, Alaskan Airlines and a couple of others that had announced that they had issues and we’re being told it’s not a safety issue, not something that’s going to cause an airplane to crash or anything like that, but it could certainly slow things down which is what we’ve seen,” said Ratliff.
According to Akamai.com, the reason why the airline industry is a target is because airlines keep logs of extensive sensitive information such as payment data, critical flight operations to even passenger details. A data breach for any of these areas can have major consequences such as financial fraud, identity theft or even widespread operational disruptions and cancellations of various flights that could affect thousands of travelers.
To complicate matters even further, cyberattacks not only threaten airlines’ reputations but can also lead to cascading effects and disruptions across the broader aviation ecosystem.
“A lot of times you have Delta, American, United, SouthWest, they’ve gobbled up like Pac-Man several other airlines and instead of completely redoing the computers they will patch them all together,” said Ratliff.
Ratliff says the lack of most recent technology for firewalls and things of this nature many times leaves the industry susceptible to these things.
Right now what passengers and flight crews are looking at is the airlines simply trying to deal with the problem.