How does the absence of availability manifest in a CP system?

In CP systems (according to the CAP theorem), achieving consistency and partition tolerance may come at the expense of availability. This manifests in situations where, during network splits or failures, part of the system may stop responding to requests to avoid violating data consistency.

Simply put, if the system cannot guarantee data consistency due to a network partition, it may refuse to serve requests to prevent returning outdated or incorrect information. Thus, the absence of availability appears as service unavailability or response delays until the system restores a consistent state.