Early in the morning of August 8th, streams of bleary-eyed and tired passengers arrived at London’s Heathrow airport, hoping for

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问题     Early in the morning of August 8th, streams of bleary-eyed and tired passengers arrived at London’s Heathrow airport, hoping for a smooth ride across the Atlantic with Delta Airlines, America’s second-largest carrier. But most did not realise they were the first victims of the most disruptive IT glitch that has hit an airline in recent years until they got to check-in desks unable to access their details. The snafus—caused by a computer outage 4,000 miles away in Delta’s Atlanta HQ—prompted the airline to cancel more than 2,000 flights, delay several hundred thousand passengers’ journeys, and in some places go back to printing boarding passes on dot-matrix machines fit to be museum pieces.
    The chaos highlights how vulnerable big firms are to their IT systems crashing. The airline’s chief operating officer, Gil West, later admitted that a malfunctioning power-control system at its data centre was to blame. Unable to access customer records or to compile passenger lists ahead of aircraft take-offs to meet security requirements, the entire airline ground to a halt for around five hours.
    Such accidents can happen, even to a company such as Delta whose systems were thought by aviation analysts to be better than those of its rivals. Only last month Southwest was forced to cancel 2,300 flights because of a faulty router that brought its systems down for 12 hours. Last September American Airlines suspended flights for several hours from Dallas/Fort Worth, its largest hub, after a similar glitch.
    What is more surprising is that it took Delta so long to get its computers running again. It has lately spent hundreds of millions of dollars on IT upgrades. But airlines’ systems are hugely complex beasts. If data is not properly backed up, for instance, it can take days to reload and make sure hundreds of connected subsystems work. "Technology is like painting a bridge. Work is never done," Delta’s chief information officer, Rahul Samant, said in June.
    One reason for the complexity is that airlines were early adopters of computerised systems. They built their first electronic reservation systems in the early 1950s; Delta’s current system once belonged to a defunct airline that went bust in 1982. But as airlines merged and more new functions were added—from crew scheduling to passenger check-in and bag tracing—they have come to resemble technological hair-balls in which one small problem quickly spirals into bigger ones that even experts struggle to disentangle.
    Yet bosses in the industry say they are reluctant to replace their systems. For an airline, it would cost billions of dollars and take five years to do. Worse still, no single IT firm has the skills to provide all the software needed for a complete replacement. With the average tenure of airline CEOs so short, the risks of such a project going wrong outweigh the benefits. It is hard for any firm to entirely eliminate IT glitches; for many it simply isn’t worth it.
Why is the system of the airlines so complicated?

选项 A、One small problem will bring reservation systems down.
B、New functions were added to the early users of airlines.
C、Airlines introduced the IT system in early days.
D、Its system was introduced in Airlines’ infancy.

答案C

解析 细节题。KK三步宝典:K1定位到段落第一句:One reason for the complexity is that airlines were early adopters of computerised systems.(如此复杂的一个原因就在于航空公司是电脑化系统最早的使用者。)KK三步宝典:K2替换和K3排除。由定位句可知,A和B都属于定位错误!只有C和D定位正确。我不太理解为什么会有人选A和B。因为第一句就说了复杂性的原因。还有人说看but后!你不尊重题干!活该选错!A) One small problem will bring reservation systems down.文中说的是:一个小问题可以快速发展成即使专家也很难理清的大问题。没有说会让预定系统瘫痪啊!B)New functions were added to the early users of the airlines.文中说了新功能被加到航空公司的IT系统上了。但是并没有说加到早期的航空公司的用户上啊!当然A和B主要是定位错误!C)Airlines introduced the IT system in early days.航空公司在很早就用了IT系统。这个in early days就不知道是什么时候了啊!是在航空很早的时候呢?还是在IT系统很早的时候,这样就对了!模糊替换!刚好可以对应原文:复杂性的一个原因在于航空公司是电脑化系统最早的使用者。D)IT system was introduced in Airlines’infancy.这个选项就是吃了实在的亏,不是在航空公司的初创期(airline’s infancy)IT system被引入,而是在IT system的早期,一定不要被出题人“狗带”啊!
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