Several weeks ago there were massive flight cancellations on Southwest Airlines and then a while later American Airlines experienced similar widespread cancellations. Immediately people began to speculate if this was a reaction to corporate decisions for mandatory vaccinations – a “blue flu” epidemic as people began to call in sick. Cancellations and very long delays were the norm of two different holiday weekend. And why were only two airlines so largely affected? It is not as though this was the first weather event these two airlines had experienced.

Let’s return to one topic that always fascinates me: chaos.  As mentioned in many other posts, mathematical chaos is not the randomness of a butterfly in China who flutters all the time, but on one occasion, the flutters give way to a tornado in Kansas – how random one might think. Such an event depends on the initial conditions in which the butterfly flutters (…. and why aren’t they called flutterbys?). Given the same initial conditions, the same tornado will predictably appear in Kansas. Continue reading →