Southwest Airlines (SWA) is a major air carrier who is known for their low fares and excellent customer service. The seating arrangement on SWA is different than most commercial airlines. On SWA, the customers do not have assigned seats. Rather, seating is based on a first-come, first-serve basis by issuing customers a boarding pass with a boarding group (A, B, and C) and boarding number (1-60). The first customers on the plane get their choice of seats, while the customers in boarding group C may be stuck in a middle seat towards the back of the plane. Typically, A-List and A-List Preferred status customers have priority boarding on the airlines. Customers with this status have an added benefit that they are guaranteed positions in the A boarding group, assuring that they will have a choice of desirable seats to select. From August 11th -15th, 2017, SWAs A-List and A-List Preferred status customers were in an uproar. There was a change in the way boarding passes were issued. These frequent flyers reviewed their boarding passes to discover that they were not prioritized. These individuals were getting boarding groups based on their check-in time and the system was not automatically giving them their coveted A-group boarding spot. Southwest Airlines apologized to their A-List and A-List Preferred status customers and gave each customer on an affected flight an extra 1,500 points in their rewards system. Five days after these problems began, the company still did not know the cause and were still working to resolve the issue.

1. Southwest Airlines systems were working as intended until August 11, 2017. What type of program change issue could have occurred that could have caused the change in boarding priority?

2. What Program Change internal controls could have prevented this type of issue?