[liberationtech] Airline Shutdown Because of Loss of Internet Service?

[Andrés Leopoldo Pacheco Sanfuentes]

One thing that comes to mind right away is that more & more companies are
replacing private-circuit based WANs by Internet-VPNs, & thus, when the
Internet is down, their "network" is down; even more, if they depend on any
SaaS (from Salesforce.com for CRM to Maximo for Asset management), or, in
general, XaaS (AWS, Rackspace, etc.), for critical business systems, a
fast-growing trend, the Internet is their "backbone."
On Jun 6, 2013 2:45 AM, "michael gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is probably not a Liberation issue directly but I'm not sure where
> else
> to address it...
>
> Sunday I was flying (Porter Airlines--small short hop Canadian carrier)
> from
> NYC to Ottawa, ON with a plane change in Toronto. When we arrived in
> Toronto
> we were informed that "because the Internet was down" planes were not able
> to land or depart.  The company's service was completely shut down for
> roughly 4 hours until the "Internet service" was restored (presumably by
> their ISP).
>
> I understand that other airlines have had similar experiences recently.
>
> My question... how exactly is Internet service so intertwined with flight
> operations that service can function only if the Internet is operational?
> (And I guess the Liberation angle... if this is now pervasive for all
> airlines what is the hackable element of all this and where are the points
> of vulnerability etc.etc.?
>
> M
>
>
>
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