More flight cancellations expected as airlines gradually recover from global technical outage

More flight cancellations expected as airlines gradually recover from global technical outage

According to the airline, more than 5,400 flights to, from or within the US were canceled on Friday and Saturday and more than 21,300 flights were delayed. FlightAware.comA third day of chaos at airports could erupt as more than 600 flights were cancelled on Sunday morning.

The problem extended outside airportswith businesses, government agencies, health and emergency services, banks, schools and universities around the world coming to a standstill or seeing services disrupted as a result of a defective software update for Microsoft Windows operating systems released by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, experts told CNN.

The outage “effectively turned computers around the world into bricks,” Glenn Gerstell, former general counsel for the U.S. National Security Agency, told CNN on Saturday.

“This will probably be the largest computer incident in terms of overall impact,” Gerstell said. “Maybe not the number of computers, but the impact on people’s lives.”

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized to customers and said a fix had been implemented, but experts say Getting the systems back in order will be a long process.

According to an estimate by Statistics Netherlands (CBS), the outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices, less than 1% of all Windows machines. a saturday blog post from Microsoft. “While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,” Microsoft said.

Major airlines have said flights are being restored, but there could be further delays and disruptions.

A majority of United Airlines’ systems have been restored from Friday’s outage, the airline said said in a statementAccording to the U.S. government, more than 400 United flights were canceled on Saturday and more than 200 flights on Sunday. FlightAware.com.

“While most of our systems have recovered from the global third-party software outage, we may still experience some disruption to our operations, including flight delays and cancellations,” United said.

Delta Air Lines is “continuing its operational recovery” after the outage prompted the airline to halt flights on Friday, a report said Saturday morning update. Still, more than 1,000 Delta flights were canceled on Saturday and more than 200 on Sunday.

“Additional cancellations are expected as some of Delta’s technology continues to recover from the vendor-caused issue Friday morning,” the update said.

American Airlines was also hit, which said in a statement rack Friday that “we have been able to safely resume our operations” and that it “has issued a travel waiver to our customers who were impacted by the supplier technology issue earlier this morning.” Allegiant Air said in a statement saturday that while “normal operations have resumed” following the outage, they are still processing a backlog of customer messages and resolving issues with their programs and platforms.

Even with the defective computer update rolled backIt’s not a quick fix for airlines, which have computers at thousands of gates that have to be manually rebooted, David Kennedy, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Binary Defense, told CNN on Saturday.

“It’s not as simple as restarting. There are a lot more steps and complexities involved,” Kennedy said. “There’s just not enough people at those airports, at those locations to do it.”

The US Department of Transportation said on Friday that it had determined that the flight delays and cancellations caused by the system failure were “controllable,” meaning they were “attributable to the airline.” In such cases, “airlines must adhere to their customer service promises.“

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in a social media after Saturday said he had received reports that some airlines were only offering passengers flight credit for cancelled flights.

“Let me be clear: You have the right to a prompt refund if your flight is canceled and you do not rebook,” Buttigieg said.

Travelers angry as summer travel plans are thwarted

Frustrated passengers queued at airports, faced delays and cancelled flights, and some missed important life events such as weddings, funerals and birthdays.

Long lines of passengers waited for help at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Saturday, with many flights still canceled or delayed.

Delta passenger Catalina Villareal described the scene this way: “Chaos. Frustration. Hunger.”

Villareal expressed her frustration over what she called the lack of information from airlines.

“I’ve had three cancellations. I’ve checked in three times for all the flights. And now I have two bags somewhere … in the airport, and nobody knows how long it’s going to take for them to come in,” Villareal said. “So we’ve been told to come tomorrow or Monday.”

Thousands of people are facing the same uncertainty as they sit packed into airports across the country waiting for answers.

“I was supposed to be in California for my mother’s wedding,” Richard Whitfield of Pasco County, Florida, told CNN on Saturday. Whitfield and his partner, Jonathan Shade, left Tampa on Thursday and missed their connecting flight in Atlanta due to bad weather, which delayed their landing and forced the plane to refuel in Tallahassee.

After their flight was delayed multiple times on Friday, the couple decided to cancel the trip and just go home. But with no flights back to Tampa available, they spent their second night Friday night in an airport hotel. They were unable to get a voucher from Delta for either of their stays.

“(Richard) has been on hold for 24 hours,” Shade told CNN. “When he finally got his number in line, it was 2,001.”

Two hours later, Richard was ranked 2,300th in Delta Air Lines’ virtual customer service queue, Shade said.

Whitfield tells CNN that the whole ordeal has had an impact on him.

“For me it’s the domino effect it has on humanity and everything we need to survive: food, sleep, water, shelter,” he said.

After spending 48 hours in Atlanta, they found a flight back to Tampa on Saturday night. They hope it isn’t delayed or canceled. For now, the couple can’t do anything but wait and “get a stiff drink,” Shade and Whitfield said.

Another passenger at Boston Logan International Airport was trying to travel to Fort Lauderdale for her father’s 96th birthday.

“My flight this morning was canceled. I was supposed to fly to Ft. Lauderdale, so they rebooked me to West Palm Beach and I got to the airport here, it was canceled. They didn’t tell me — I didn’t get any notice, nothing,” Charlotte Yeh told CNN affiliate WFXT on Saturday.

Some passengers at Boston Airport were angry that their summer vacations and plans were being disrupted.

“We’ve had this trip to Las Vegas booked for a while,” Marc Forbes told WFXT. “Outright cancellation with the next available flight Monday at 6 p.m. and we were only going to be in Vegas for four nights, so that trip has to be rebooked.”

Carol Edwards said her flights on Friday and Saturday were both cancelled and the next flight isn’t until Monday.

“We have so many plans, we’re going to visit family, have dinner, see friends, party, everything, so there’s nothing we can do,” she told WFXT.

CNN’s Zoe Sottile, Isabel Rosales, Jaide Garcia and Amanda Musa contributed to this report.

The problem that is affecting businesses, government agencies and schools around the world is not unique to the US. It is a global problem caused by the flawed software update for Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Despite an apology from CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz, travelers in the U.S. are still experiencing disruptions and cancellations. Major airlines like United and Delta are still experiencing delays and cancellations.

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