If it makes the news it is almost by definition rare.
Im not sure that's true. If something makes the news it's likely to be of interest to a large amount of people, that doesn't immediately qualify it as something rare.
Re:UK Air traffic control network crash
by theolivenbaum on Monday August 28, 2023 @03:09PM
(#37298999)
Musk's foolish actions while owner of Twitter are not rare yet always on the news
Not to forget the failure of Frankfurt airport systems earlier this year due to the breakage of a single glass-fibre cable:
https://www.dw.com/en/lufthansa-system-failure-causes-massiv...
Though this is not due to outdated IT, but lack of redundancy of a critical component of the system instead.
https://www.ft.com/content/65544730-8216-11e4-b9d0-00144feab...
And that's just the UK. Airport systems crashing is a regular occurrence. Paris crashed due to still relying on a Windows 3.1 system:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-23-year-old-windows-3-1-syst...
The IT is just poor. Tech firms routinely change much more massive and complex systems at a far faster pace compared to the stagnation found in airline IT, and yet total failures are not more frequent.