Long-awaited summer vacations and even surgeries were thrown into turmoil on Friday due to a global tech outage that crippled industries worldwide, forcing many Americans to miss flights and camp out overnight in airports.
At JFK Airport early Friday, Gary Robertson, a father from Queens, expressed his frustration after learning his family’s flight was among the hundreds canceled nationwide due to the unprecedented glitch.
In New York City, LaGuardia Airport canceled 60 flights and delayed over 100, while JFK saw dozens of flights delayed and 38 canceled by mid-morning as the global crisis unfolded. Robertson, along with his wife, two kids, and piles of luggage, had planned to fly to Orlando, Florida, and then set off on a cruise vacation.
Robertson, a 42-year-old salesman, shared his frustration about the situation, noting the difficulty of traveling with young children and the hard work that went into planning their trip. He described the airport scene as chaotic and mentioned that many fellow travelers were in the same predicament.
Meanwhile, Matt Jordan, a music professor stranded at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport, feared he and his partner might miss their Alaskan cruise, scheduled to set sail on Saturday. Their travel plans were upended, and they were rerouted to Minneapolis. Airlines scrambled to find food and toiletries for passengers forced to camp out overnight in the terminal, providing chips, snacks, toiletry bags, pillows, and blankets.
The disruptions were caused by a faulty software update deployed by US cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to computers running Microsoft Windows, affecting systems that airlines, hospitals, and other industries rely on.
Tim Henigin, 71, at Pittsburgh International Airport, was trying to set off on his Italian vacation and commented on the global impact of one company’s software update. His wife Jackie added that the situation was a mess.
Katie Mayo, 43, from Los Angeles, also faced lengthy delays out of Pittsburgh, where she had been visiting family. She commented on the disorganization and long day ahead.
The global outage led to massive lines at airports as airlines lost access to check-in and booking services at the peak of summer travel. At Baltimore’s airport, nurse Rose Geffrard, traveling with her two young children to a cousin’s wedding in Boston, spent nearly two hours waiting in line for paper tickets as Spirit Airlines personnel manually processed passenger information.
The outage also affected the healthcare industry. Mass General Brigham in Massachusetts canceled all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures, and medical visits on Friday due to the severity of the global IT outage. They continued to provide care for urgent health concerns in clinics and emergency departments and for patients currently in hospitals. Mass General Brigham operates two of the US’s top-ranked hospitals: Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. It was not immediately clear how many patients were affected.
