‘Dream vacation gone’: Global outage cripples travel plans for SFO passengers

SAN FRANCISCO – A computer outage that crippled the airline industry nationally is having effects right here in the Bay Area. 

As of 10:25PM on Friday, SFO had seen 162 flight cancelations over 24 hours, according to site FlightAware.

Frustrated passengers, some on the verge of tears, have no idea about if or when they will be able to travel to their destinations.  

Inside San Francisco International Airport, some passengers are learning it’s going to be a long time before they can go home. “First available flight is Tuesday,” said Simon Rush who’s on his way home to Christchurch, New Zealand.

Other passengers say they tried to leave as the crisis was unfolding and now the airlines can’t find their luggage. “Now we gotta go through lines and computers and wait for luggage to come up to us,” said Adrienne Akinsete. “Now we’re going to miss our second flight. My dream vacation is gone. I was supposed to get on a cruise.  I was supposed to be headed to Orlando. This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous.”

The airline disruptions began after a software update from CrowdStrike crashed Microsoft’s suite of programs. Inside airports, everywhere you looked, you could see the blue screen of death.

Aviation experts say some of their systems have moved to the cloud, so when the CrowdStrike update crashed the system it was like a domino effect impacting most carriers. 

“What it showed this morning is how dependent the modern commercial aviation industry is on automation,” said Michael McCormick from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Experts say fortunately critical safety systems and air traffic control weren’t impacted. But, the logistics of getting planes, personnel and passengers where they needed all came to a grinding halt.

The majority of SFO’s cancelations were with the airport’s biggest carriers; United, Delta and American Airlines.

Kokoa Amor says she’s on tour promoting her music and has been stuck here with no word on when she will be able to go. 

“I’ve been here since 9 o’clock yesterday. 9 o’clock in the morning yesterday,” said Amor. “Then I didn’t find out my flight was canceled until 9 p.m. I only found that out because of the board. I didn’t even get any kind of notification, no type of email.”

Consumer advocates say not all airlines were impacted, so this amounts to an IT issue, and is ultimately the responsibility of the airlines. Advocates say that means if the flight was canceled, passengers are entitled to a refund. 

“If you want it, by law, but you have to ask for it,” said Teresa Murray from the Public Interest Research Group. “You may not want a refund, you maybe just want to get where you were going even if you’re a day late.”

Airline experts say even if the computers get back online, it’s going to be days before travel gets back on schedule because pilots, planes and crews are out of position, so the airlines can’t operate at peak efficiency until everything is in place.