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

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.
It’s hard for experts to solve the problems in the airline software system because ______.
选项 A、new functions are making the situation worse
B、Delta’s system once went bust in 1982
C、passengers increased as airlines merged
D、the system was built in 1950
答案A
解析 细节题。KK三步宝典：Kl定位。由题干experts定位到第五段最后一句：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 hairballs in which one small problem quickly spirals into bigger ones that even experts struggle to disentangle．KK三步宝典：K2替换。线索句的意思为：“但随着航空公司合并和更多功能的添加——从乘务调度到乘客办理登机手续到行李跟踪——这些系统开始变得像技术毛团，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。”也就是说，公司合并和功能的添加，使得小问题变成大问题。选项A“新功能使得情况不断恶化”。这里making the situation worse(情况恶化)和resemble technological hairballs in which one small problem quickly spirals into bigger ones是同义替换。事实上，这里是一个比喻的修辞手法，把面临的问题比喻成了越来越大的毛球。因此，选项A正确。选项D、B为无关选项，因为线索句中没有出现1950或1982。比对选项C，线索句中并没有谈到乘客人数增加，更没有说人数增加导致系统问题无法被解决。KK三步宝典：K3排除。因为定位准确，分析到位，无需进一步排除其他选项。没有必要在A、B两个选项上浪费时间。事实上，A、B选项分别是通过对第五段二、三句偷梁换柱得到的干扰项。
特别说明：因果关系。有同学认为C选项提到了airlines merged，和线索句里的but as airlines merged and more new functions were added相关，或者说airlines merged和more new functions were added均为后面的理由，所以选项c是正确的。其实，这是混淆了因果关系。选项c认为“随着公司合并，乘客人数增加了”，所以公司合并是原因，是前提，而结果是“乘客人数增加了”。所以选项c陈述的原因是“乘客人数增加了”，而不是“公司合并了”。同一句话，在不同的语境，可以分别代表因或果。
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