It's not a given that you can't run an airline without legacy software. There are other airline companies that have modernized. Or newer ones that don't have to

It's not a given that you can't run an airline without legacy software. There are other airline companies that have modernized. Or newer ones that don't have to. And also companies selling software. The issue here is United penny pinching for decades and now they are stuck with their in house created mess. The right move for them could be to buy one of the smaller upstarts with less issues and then just roll out whatever the small company is using and retire the creaking old mess that just failed them. Any project to slowly modernize or update that is doomed to fail. You see the same in the fintech world where small relatively new banks are running circles around their older competitors. In the energy world, a British company called Octopus is actually licensing their platform (Kraken) to lots of energy companies around the world. One of the interesting things about companies that move to that platform is that they become a much more attractive target for M&A as well; because the job of migrating all the old customers is easier if both companies that are merging use the same, modern platform. That's the hard risky part of any merger. Apparently, in some cases the decision to move to Kraken was motivated as a preparation for this. I'm mentioning this because that's something that could work in the airline industry. Or United can just zombie on for a few more years and then end up getting absorbed into some other, more successful company. This stuff must be costing them at all levels in the company. I can't imagine it's very efficient. And the airline industry is pretty cut-throat at this point.