It reminds me of a time a new employee had to manually enter a barcode that the scanner wouldn't pickup. Accidentally that employee enter numbers but also a letter.
Too the application and main DB down. Employee was nearly fired on the spot...but unlike other managers I like to do long, thorough RCAs and it was then that I learned the application is shit. It will take ANY manual input as valid and try and write that into a DB cells whose properties are expecting numbers only. A cascade of odd behaviours but different optimisation scripts and legacy app function then completely locks a live production system.
The new employee kept their job and lead developer was nearly fired (I did try to can his lazy stupid ass but he was deemed too valuable) and we implemented basic error detection and correction logic and guess what? Shitty barcode entries never crashed the system again.
The fact this is a system for air traffic control makes me wonder who the fuck in their right minds can imagine it's OK to blame what is essentially incorrect user input as a cause for the entire system to fail?!
I'm sure there's a lot more detail and nuance but ultimately if you manage a system you manage the uptime, the performance, the availability, the integrity, the DR & the BCP for it.
Shocking that this can happen and actually did.