For all the crappiness, you do have to appreciate the difficulty and complexity of swapping out these systems more or less on the fly.
I feel their pain, but I still must ask "why not earlier?". It's not an entirely unreasonable question, though I'm glad it's underway.
There's the distinct possibility that the pains of flying are the cause of the shortness of cash. And given what a few choice pieces of bad press has done to some airlines, and that updating a few things would make the problems less likely to occur, the implication that funds have been misspent is pretty easy to derive.
It's not cheap nor easy, I fully agree. And it sucks. But might they have done some of the smaller things sooner, possibly preventing their downturn?
Man, I get crotchety just by going to different King Soopers (Kroger) stores in my area and having to deal with variations in "swipe your card" terminals and protocols.
Two or three brands make nearly all of them in my area. And even within the brand, buttons / locations / workflow changes. WTF?