Global tech outage sparks chaos at O'Hare, Midway airports, hospitals, courts — even Starbucks

A worldwide computer systems outage related to Microsoft Windows wreaked havoc on a wide swath of American life on Friday, keeping airplanes on the ground, disrupting health care, courts, banks and theaters — even preventing some Starbucks customers from ordering their mochas and cold brews.

The global glitch underscored the vulnerability of such far reaching dependence on software provided by only a handful of organizations.

"This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, a professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and former Head of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre.

That discomfort hit home immediately at Chicago's airports.

Passengers arriving at O’Hare International Airport on Friday morning were greeted with “the blue screen of death” — an unfortunate reminder that they weren't going anywhere fast.

Kay and Larry Light were pulling up to O’Hare around 5:30 a.m. when a friend from Ireland alerted them about the outages.

It didn’t take long for them to experience it firsthand, seeing an airport “packed” when they arrived and their phones “exploding” with notifications.

The two were on their way to see their newly engaged daughter in Massachusetts — in addition to a weekend trip going around the Boston coast — and had already booked several hotels and a rental car.

By 8 a.m. they were scrambling to grab seats on standby flights, though they worried about checking their bags and missing the flight as much as they did about rescheduling hotel stays.

“It’s sort of a dilemma, do you go home for the guarantee or wait around for standby,” Larry said.

Hundreds of flights grounded

By Friday afternoon, the Chicago Department of Aviation reported 245 flights have been canceled in the previous 24 hours at O’Hare.

Another 12 had been canceled at Midway, according to the city’s real-time delay dashboard.

Chicago-based United Airlines posted on its website that customers can “expect schedule disruptions to continue throughout Friday,” though it was resuming some flights. It listed 13 airports that were affected by the outage, including O’Hare. The airline said it would waive change fees and fare differences for customers that chose to reschedule their trip.

American Airlines said in a statement that it was also one of the multiple airlines impacted by "a widespread technology issue with a vendor." American was able to reestablish operations by 4 a.m., but warned flight schedule impacts could include delays and cancellations.

Meanwhile, Jet Blue and Southwest said they have not experienced any systemwide delays from the global tech outage.

Culprit is CrowdStrike update

Friday’s chaos began with a faulty update that was pushed out from CrowdStrike, an online security firm whose software is used around the world across multiple industries. In a Friday post on social media platform X, George Kurtz, president and CEO, cited a “defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts” — noting that Mac and Linux hosts were not impacted.

But, because scores of companies rely on CrowdStrike for their security needs with Windows as their operating system, the consequences of this kind of technical problem are far-reaching.

Downdectector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected — although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services.

At Midway Airport, Volaris airline employees were seen writing information down instead of using computers.

One passenger said Volaris is just writing passengers’ information down and that they were told they’d call them when flights are good to go. By early afternoon, several Volaris customers were told by gate attendants that if they hadn’t printed out boarding passes or downloaded one to their phone prior to the system going down, that they would not be able to fly and would need to be put on a later flight.

Commuter trains, banks feel the pain

Metra reported delays up to 45 minutes Friday morning on its Union Pacific lines because of the global tech outage.

Metra spokesman Michael Gillis said the tech outage affected the Union Pacific lines, which are run and dispatched by the UP. The UP-NW lines was affected the most, with three canceled trains and several delayed trains, he said. There were also delays up to 25 minutes on the UP-West line, and minor delays on the North Central Service, where trains were held up by crossings with a UP line.

Inside Ogilvie Station, billboards were showing a blue Microsoft error screen. Clear Channel Outdoor, which runs the billboards, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

While airlines seemed to have taken the biggest hit on Friday, a wide range of services from health care to banking and charge card systems were affected.

TD Bank was among those reporting that customers couldn’t access accounts and American Express said it was having trouble processing transactions.

In the Chicago area, it appeared most people had access to money and account information during the day. BMO Harris and Fifth Third were among the banks that said difficulties mostly involved employees’ computer access and outside vendors, but customer services and branch operations continued.

At UChicago Medicine, the outage caused overnight disconnections to hundreds of computer systems and servers, mostly those using Windows, according to a message sent to staff.

By 10 a.m., the “vast majority of systems” at the health care network had been restored.

DMV visits get even worse

The outage disrupted state government operations, including several online systems that serve the public.

Initial court hearings at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse were delayed, and some defendants who were supposed to be transferred from the Illinois Department of Corrections weren’t expected to show up at all, Cook County Judge Deidre Dyer said.

Some people who went to state facilities for renewal of their driver's licenses or other services were turned away.

Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias said on the social media platform X that all 138 Department of Motor Vehicle offices statewide had been affected by the software crash, with some being unable to open. But as of Friday afternoon, a spokesman said the Chicago-area sites were fully functioning.

Giannoulias said Downstate offices were "serving customers in some capacity." Earlier, he had advised people to call his office at 800-252-8980 before visiting any location to confirm it was open and which services were available.

Mocha mess, theater drama

Even people looking for a cup of coffee or tickets to the theater experienced the outage's effects.

Starbucks said its mobile order ahead and pay features were temporarily down.

“We continue to welcome and serve customers in the vast majority of our stores and drive-thrus and are doing everything we can to bring all systems online as quickly as possible,” Jaci Anderson, director of corporate communications at Starbucks, said.

A Macy's spokeswoman said the retailer is experiencing problems in some software from vendors. "All Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury stores, digital platforms and distribution centers continue to be operational for our customers’ shopping needs," she said.

A notice on the Goodman Theatre’s website told customers that their ticketing system would not be able to process orders electronically but the box office (opening at noon Friday) would take requests by phone and contact customers once service returned.

Steppenwolf Theatre posted a similar message on its website, telling customers “We are working with our technology partners to restore services as quickly as possible.”

Experts stress that Friday’s disruptions underscore the vulnerability of worldwide dependence on software that comes from only a handful of providers.

And those caught up in the massive mess agreed.

“The question is, why are we not fault tolerant against a single issue?” stalled O'Hare passenger Larry Light wondered. “You see the ripple effects, you have to question how it was evaluated and tested.”

Contributing: Pat Nabong, Zubaer Khan, Miriam DiNunzio, Subrina Hudson, AP