On one sweltering summer afternoon in June, thunderstorms rolled over Boston Logan International Airport. It was the kind of brief, predictable summer squall that East Coasters have learned to ignore, but within hours, the airport completely shut down. Every departure was grounded, and flyers waited hours before they could get on their scheduled flights.
Among those stranded were Maxwell Tabarrok’s parents, in town to help move him into Harvard Business School, where he is completing an economics PhD. Tabarrok told Fortune he was fascinated by how an entire airport could grind to a halt, not because of some catastrophic event, but due to a predictable hiccup rippling through an overstretched system.
