Spilling coffee into electrical or communications equipment is obviously going to cause major problems. The effects may not always appear immediately - my computer keyboard mysteriously failed recently. Being careful with money, I took it apart to try and repair it.
The cause of the trouble was corrosive destruction of some of the fine silver tracks on the circuit board, associated with an anonymous brown stain - clearly very old tea or coffee.
I succeessfully repaired it by repainting in the lines with silver conductive paint - as sold by Halfords for car heated rear windows.
Perhaps every air-liner should carry a small bottle in the cockpit, for those essential in-flight emergency repairs?