Airline passengers face chaos and uncertainty after massive IT outage
Passengers reported being stranded at airports, receiving hand-written boarding passes, and facing delays amid the global IT outage.
Mailee Osten-Tan/Getty
- A mass IT outage is causing global travel chaos.
- Passengers face delays and cancellations at airports as digital services relying on Microsoft were affected.
- Several passengers told BI that the situation was being made worse by the airline's communications platforms being down.
A global IT outage has brought travel systems worldwide to a standstill, causing issues for passengers at airports, on train services, and at gas stations.
Major airlines, banks, and retailers are experiencing widespread disruptions after Microsoft reported problems with its online services, linked to an issue at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
American, United, and Delta issued ground stops on Friday due to potential communication issues, while airports and airlines worldwide reported issues and delays affecting airlines.
As boarding, tickets, and pilot communication channels were affected by the outage, passengers were hit with delays and cancellations.
Scott Sanders, a passenger at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, told Business Insider that people were sleeping on the ground due to the disruption. The atmosphere was relatively calm, he said.
Sanders' flight to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) had been scheduled to depart on Thursday at 10:55 p.m. However, after one and a half hours of sitting on board the plane, passengers were told to disembark.
He still hoped to reach his father's 80th birthday celebration on Saturday.
Crowdstrike is putting a damper on this trip. Trying to get to Ohio from SEA to celebrate my dad's 80th birthday. You can hear the announcement from the poor gate agent, no one knows how long this will last.#Crowdstrike #SeaTac pic.twitter.com/t4nCH8Y6UD
— Scott Sanders (@SeahawkSanders) July 19, 2024
Jordan van den Lamb, a public servant, told BI that he had been stranded for six hours at Hobart Airport in Tasmania.
Lamb said the airport was empty because other passengers were told their flights were canceled.
He was told there was still a chance his flight would take off. But five hours later, it was canceled. Jetstar would not pay for accommodation, he said.
But it did offer aggrieved passengers two vouchers amounting to $10.70 (16 AUD), which they were only allowed to spend all at once with no change given.
'Tired and hopeless'
At Los Angeles International Airport, Sarah Patterson experienced a similar disruption.
Patterson told BI her flight with Spirit Airlines to Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) was delayed by more than two hours on Thursday evening before it was eventually canceled.
It took three hours to get her checked luggage back from the airline, she said.
On top of the delay, the airline's app was completely unresponsive and they had been told that no rebookings could be made.
"There's about three flights of people, at least, all in a single line for the Spirit desk, all trying to get rebooked," Patterson said.
"I have a family vacation I'm supposed to go on on Saturday, so it's pretty brutal," she said.
three cancelled flights all standing in a line at LAX not moving bc they can’t rebook any of us until the computers come back #outage pic.twitter.com/w9trzshNST
— Sarah (perfect angel) (@daddy_spatty) July 19, 2024
A spokesperson for Spirit told BI that its team is working "as quickly as possible to have everything restored." The company wrote on X Friday that it is currently unable to rebook flights for impacted passengers because of the outage.
Jacqualine Ebule was also stuck at LAX after boarding her 11:15 p.m. flight to Washington, D.C. An hour later, they were told to disembark, and at 3:30 a.m., the flight was canceled.
"We sat on the tarmac for an hour, and they said it was a technical issue with Microsoft," Ebule told BI. "We then had to deplane and everyone has just been sitting around waiting."
Calling the whole experience "a hassle" she was thinking of just heading home.
"People with kids look extremely tired and hopeless," she added.
Reverting to manual processes
The global IT outage is affecting airlines differently depending on their use of Microsoft services for their operations.
At Melbourne Airport, Australia, the international airlines Jetstar and Scoot were experiencing ongoing issues, while all other international airlines were processing passengers normally, the airport confirmed on X on Friday morning.
Some airlines resorted to using manual processes to manage the situation.
Aditi Bharade
In Singapore Changi Airport, whiteboards displaying flight numbers were laid out in a terminal 1 lounge.
Elsewhere, passengers of Indian airline IndiGo posted images of handwritten boarding passes on social media. BI was unable to verify their accounts. However, the airline confirmed on X that the outage had impacted access to boarding passes and check-in.
Trains and gas stations
Travelers trying to use other forms of transport have also faced disruption.
National train operators in the UK reported network-wide IT issues on Friday morning.
In the US, Amtrak confirmed to customers on X that they were experiencing problems with their booking website, and arrival information at some stations was not working.
Drivers were not exempt from the travel chaos either.
Some Speedway gas stations around the US closed because digital gas pumps failed to work, and others were not accepting payments, a Speedway customer service employee confirmed to BI.
"They had to move to cash only and some don't have any internet," the employee said.