> Right on cue the phones started ringing. In every terminal in every airport around the world, the airline was suddenly unable to create, check or cancel ticke

> Right on cue the phones started ringing. In every terminal in every airport around the world, the airline was suddenly unable to create, check or cancel tickets. That doesn't sound like they deleted a flight, how often do you hit a flight that's currently interesting to airports around the world? Of course there are exceptions, e.g. Emirates would route you via Dubai, so a flight Dubai to Frankfurt could have connecting passengers from a few dozen different originating countries, but not "every airport around the world". OK, come to think of it, maybe the inconsistency in the DB halted everything, e.g. the system saw a few hundred passengers booked on flight with ID 463523 but there's no record of a flight with that ID...