I agree with the issues discussed by the author, and huge weather events that stop flights for many hours or days will always cause problems.
But, the reason for little issues, like a single flight crew timing out, or a single plane’s mechanical problems leading to major complications for passengers is because of the airlines running their business so lean, so there is no redundancy. Since another airline is running this way, and ticket price is everything, they have to do it too. It didn’t used to be this way.
Airliners have flights set up so they are full or nearly so to maximize profits, as businesses do. But, in so doing, when things go a little wrong, they go very badly for the customer as there is no flight to get them on that is not already full.
We’ve seen this in medicine, too, where hospitals have to run very lean because they do not control their pricing or are provided extra funds to purchase and maintain infrastructure for disasters. During COVID, we did not have enough ventilators, medicine, or masks. Now, ventilators are expensive to keep sitting around and not use without some type of government program, but I can tell you that hospitals are being run extremely lean these days.
The lean manufacturing philosophy has trickled into a lot more industries, and the consumer is no longer the first consideration.