Once you realize how many people in critical industries (power grid, telecom, global cargo/logistics) are in fact making things up as they go along, and there aren't really any highly organized and responsible people running the show, you start to worry.
What is the alternative? Extensive playbooks for every possible scenario that may or may not make sense in the actual scenario because a few critical details are different? A "mission-control center" is really no different: it's just people making stuff up on the spot.
In the end, there is no substitute for human judgement in the situation itself.
> What is the alternative? Extensive playbooks for every possible scenario that may or may not make sense in the actual scenario because a few critical details are different?
Yes? I suspect they have playbooks and/or run gameday exercises for other aspects of disaster preparedness and business continuity. Why not do the same for these sorts of issues that affect the travel network?
The network of airports, planes, and crews is a graph (or multiple graphs). What happens when a node disappears?
That may be a hard question to answer, but it seems cheaper to answer, and plan around, it before the situation occurs rather than after.
