“Currently seventy-three delayed or held.”
“How many aircraft?”
“Across the next rotation window, potentially more than one hundred fifty.”
“Airborne?”
“Unaffected.”
Thomas nodded once.
“Good.”
It was the first thing anyone had said all night that sounded remotely reassuring.
Then CFO Elena Vance spoke.
“The financial exposure is growing quickly.”
“How quickly?”
“Direct operating losses are not the worst part.”
“What is?”
“Public confidence.”
Social media had already started noticing.
Passengers in Boston posted videos from aircraft waiting at gates.
Chicago passengers showed screens filled with delays.
The Transatlantic booking site was intermittently restricting changes while transactions were manually validated.
Rumors spread.
Cyberattack.
Ransomware.
Regulatory seizure.
Aviation sabotage.
None was true.
The truth was stranger.
Thomas looked toward the general counsel.
“Can Nexus legally do this?”
The lawyer chose his words carefully.
“The contract permits temporary validation restrictions in cases involving suspected integrity failures in client-submitted transactional data.”
“A seat assignment?”
“Not the seat itself.”
“What then?”
“The reason code.”
Thomas frowned.
The lawyer continued.
“If an employee knowingly entered a false operational event into a Nexus-integrated record to justify a manual override, Nexus can argue that constitutes data-integrity misuse.”
“So this isn’t about discrimination.”
“Legally, the hold is about integrity.”
Thomas looked at him.
“And practically?”
Nobody answered.
He already knew.
“Who is the employee?”
“Carol Peterson.”