“This massive outage shines a light on just how much of a knife-edge the travel world sits on.”
Several US airlines, including United, American, Delta, Hawaiian, Spirit, Frontier, and Allegiant, experienced a ripple effect in flight cancellations through the weekend after their operations were halted during a global tech outage Friday.
It wasn’t just airlines facing outages. The outage was related to a flawed software update by the cyber security firm CrowdStrike, that affected some 8.5 million computers worldwide operating on Microsoft Windows. A fix has been deployed, but the systems of many of the affected companies, including those in the healthcare, banking, and educational industries are still experiencing knock-on effects, as in many cases each computer required a manual reboot.
Airline systems are vast and complex, and the safe operation of aircraft depends on certain computer systems to be working. Airline computer networks handle everything from tracking the position of aircraft and flight crews, weight and balance planning, passenger reservations and sensitive security data. A significant number of the systems are safety-critical, meaning the airline cannot dispatch flights until they’re back online, which led to the widespread grounding of flights by several airlines Friday.
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“This massive outage shines a light on just how much of a knife-edge the travel world sits on,” noted Carrie Hartman, President at 3Sixty, a global corporate travel and relocation platform.
Hartman noted that displaced travelers experienced difficulty over the weekend finding accommodations, as many hotels were already booked at the height of the peak summer travel season.
Not all carriers, however, were brought low by the outage. Alaska Airlines reported no issues directly related to the outage, and Southwest Airlines, which uses an older version of Windows for many internal systems, was also unaffected, and flights continued operating normally.
The US Department of Transportation said Friday it considered the delays related to the CrowdStrike outage “controllable”, meaning they consider the cause of the delay to be within the airline’s control—even though the outage was the result of a third-party error.
The DOT directed passengers on affected flights to review the Customer Service Commitment for the airline they’re traveling on to see what they qualify for if their flight is delayed or cancelled. The DOT does not set compensation or reimbursement rules, but does expect airlines to honor the commitments they published in their Customer Service Commitments for passengers. Airlines typically cover passenger expenses and issues compensation for controllable delays and cancellations—unlike those consider beyond the airline’s control, like delays related to weather.
If airlines don’t fulfill their promises, the DOT advises passengers to file a complaint with the department.
In a social media post Saturday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he had heard reports that some passengers were not receiving refunds for flights that had been cancelled and not rebooked.
“Let me be clear,” he said, “you are entitled to get your money back promptly if your flight is cancelled and you don’t take a rebooking.”
The DOT issued a final ruling earlier this year on when and how airlines must refund passengers after a flight is cancelled or significantly changed, but the rules won’t take effect until this fall, giving airlines time to change internal systems and processes to comply.
For now, airline operations at the affected carriers are returning to normal, although knock-on effects may linger into next week. Delta Air Lines suspended acceptance of unaccompanied minors over the weekend, and has said it won’t do so before at least Wednesday, until the system is reliable enough to safely transport children traveling alone.
Of the airlines experiencing lingering effects, Delta appeared to be the most impacted. By late Sunday the airline had cancelled 26% of flights for the day, compared with 9% for United and 7% for Spirit.
Industrywide, 3,403 flights were cancelled in the US Friday, the day of the outage; 2,146 flights were scrubbed Saturday; and 1,655 scrapped by late Sunday, according to the flight data site FlightAware.