Internet outage latest | Airlines, businesses, border crossings hit by global tech disruption

Businesses and governments worldwide experienced hours-long disruptions Friday as a widespread technology outage affected services across industries. Flights were grounded and numerous hospitals, small businesses and government offices were disrupted.

At the heart of the massive disruption is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that provides software to scores of companies worldwide. The company says the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows, noting that the issue behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

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Hundreds stranded at Mexican airports, but band keeps Cancún travelers entertained

MEXICO CITY — Long lines of people were waiting for information in several international airports in Mexico as hundreds of people had their travel plans interrupted by delayed and canceled flights Friday.

In Cancún, the main tourist destination on the Caribbean coast, a band was stranded and was playing at the airport, while some travelers livened up their long waits by singing a popular Mexican song, “Cielito Lindo,” with a chorus urging people to sing instead of cry. The title translates roughly to “Lovely Sweet One” or “Sweetheart,” and the song embodies a national sentiment of remaining happy even in the worst moments.

The airport there had 24 canceled and 100 delayed flights.

At the main Mexico City airport, 22 flights were canceled and another 250 were delayed, affecting some 2,000 passengers, especially those traveling to or arriving from the United States, said Rear Admiral José Ramón Rivera, its general director.

Viva Aerobus, a low-cost airline, announced the cancellation of all its international flights scheduled for Friday. Volaris was another of the most affected companies.

In some cities in the north of the country, such as Tijuana, there were delays and long lines at several border crossings. But the Mexican government did not report any damage to its computer systems.

Delta Air Lines and its regional affiliates have canceled hundreds of flights

DALLAS — Delta Air Lines and its regional affiliates canceled more than a quarter of their schedule on the East Coast by midafternoon Friday, aviation data provider Cirium said.

More than 1,100 flights for Delta and its affiliates have been canceled.

United and United Express had canceled more than 500 flights, or 12% of their schedule, and American Airlines’ network had canceled 450 flights, 7.5% of its schedule.

Southwest and Alaska do not use the CrowdStrike software that led to the global internet outages and had canceled fewer than a half-dozen flights each.

Portland, Oregon, mayor declares an emergency over the outage

PORTLAND, Ore. — Mayor Ted Wheeler declared an emergency Friday after more than half of the city’s computer systems were affected by the global internet outage.

Wheeler said during a news conference that while emergency services calls weren’t interrupted, dispatchers were having to manually track 911 calls with pen and paper for a few hours. He said 266 of the city’s 487 computer systems were affected.

State and local governments in the US work on recovering from the internet outage

States and local governments across the U.S. worked to resolve problems caused by the global internet outage.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said critical state IT systems that had suffered from the outage were fully operational by midafternoon.

In Alaska, the state court system repaired every computer workstation and server, completing the task within 12 hours.

“Thankfully, our Information Services team worked overnight repairing as much as possible to ensure that essential functions are operational and that hearings are able to go forward today,” Koford said in an email.

In Kansas, the outage temporarily blocked the public’s online access to court records because it affected servers for the judicial branch’s case management system, according to spokesperson Lisa Taylor. Servers were back up quickly by Friday afternoon — in sharp contrast to the weeks it took to resume online access to court records after a cyberattack in October.

But in other places, the recovery was slower.

Anthony Lewis, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, came to Norfolk County Superior Court outside Boston for a case, only to learn all cases on Friday were rescheduled.

“I drove all the way out here for nothing,” he said.

The White House is in contact with CrowdStrike executives

The White House says it is in regular contact with executives at CrowdStrike, which makes the software tied to the global internet outage. President Joe Biden is continuing to receive updates, officials said.

Federal agencies also are assessing the effects of the CrowdStrike outage on U.S. government operations, the White House said.

Border crossings into the US are delayed

SAN DIEGO — People seeking to enter the U.S. from both the north and the south found that the border crossings were delayed by the internet outage.

The San Ysidro Port of Entry was gridlocked Friday morning with pedestrians waiting three hours to cross, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Even cars with people approved for a U.S. Customers and Border Protection “Trusted Traveler” program for low-risk passengers waited up to 90 minutes. The program, known as SENTRI, moves passengers more quickly through customs and passport control if they make an appointment for an interview and submit to a background check to travel through customs and passport control more quickly when they arrive in the U.S.

The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System posted on X that some of its employees who live in Tijuana, Mexico, were unable to get to work Friday. The agency said the disruption may affect its service and encouraged riders to check for delays or detours.

Meanwhile, at the U.S.-Canada border, Windsor Police reported long delays at the crossings at the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor tunnel.

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The dateline has been corrected to San Diego.

Air travel has been disrupted around the globe

BERLIN — Airlines across the world reported disruptions to check-in systems and other issues that caused flights to be grounded or delayed.

German-based airline Eurowings, a budget subsidiary of Lufthansa, called on customers who were traveling inside Germany to book train tickets instead and submit them for reimbursement after it canceled German domestic flights and services to and from the United Kingdom.

At least 100 flights to and from Switzerland’s Zurich Airport were canceled Friday. Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport also saw flights canceled after being hit with the outage. Issues were also reported in the busy European hubs of Amsterdam and Rome.

France’s airport authority reported that some flights were temporarily suspended and there were check-in delays at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports.

Thailand’s two largest airports reported being forced to check in passengers manually.

In South Korea, several low-cost airlines reported problems, triggering delays in passenger boardings at Incheon international Airport, the country’s biggest airport, airport officials said.

In Canada, Porter Airlines said it was canceling its flights for several hours because of the outage. Azul Airlines, a Brazilian low-cost airline, said its check-in systems were affected, causing occasional flight delays.

Some U.S. air passengers were stranded or waited for hours to board

MINNEAPOLIS — Passengers across the U.S. found themselves facing a miserable experience Friday at some of the nation’s airports.

The FAA said the airlines United, American, Delta and Allegiant had all been grounded.

At the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, Sarah Schafer was headed to Florida for her cousin’s 50th birthday party, an event that had been scheduled around her availability.

She had been waiting for almost three hours Friday with no indication of when and where her flight would be rebooked. With lines stretched back the entire of length of her terminal, she stood in line with an injured ankle and used a cane to prop herself up.

“I seem calm,” Schafer said. “But my angry side might come out.”

More than 70 flights were canceled by 7 a.m. at Los Angeles International Airport and passengers were stuck in hours-long waits to get through security or to try to rebook their flights, the Los Angeles Times reported.

At Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, many information screens, including those at boarding gates, continued to be stuck on the blue Windows “recovery” screen on Friday afternoon.

Outages affect hospitals, doctor’s offices in US, Canada, England

Health care providers across the U.S. and in Canada and England had their services disrupted by the global internet outage, though some systems saw little or no effect.

Harris Health System, which runs public hospitals and clinics in the Houston area, said it had to suspend hospital visits “until further notice” due to the outage. Elective hospital procedures were being canceled and rescheduled.

The outage affected records systems for Providence, a health system with 51 hospitals in Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon and Washington state.

The New York-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center said it was pausing the start of any procedures that require anesthesia.

In New England, the outage led some hospitals to cancel appointments.

A spokesperson at Mass General Brigham, the largest health care system in Massachusetts, said the outage had resulted in all scheduled nonurgent surgeries, procedures and medical visits being canceled for Friday. Emergency departments remained open.

The 188-hospital HCA Healthcare system said it didn’t expect its ability to provide care to be affected, and in Los Angeles, the Cedars-Sinai Health System remained open and continued to provide care. The Cleveland Clinic also said patient care was not affected.

In Canada, University Health Network, one of that nation’s largest hospital networks, said clinical activity was continuing as scheduled, but some patients may experience delays.

Across the Atlantic, Britain’s National Health Service said there were problems at most doctors’ offices across England as the outage hit the appointment and patient record system used across the health service. The state-funded NHS treats the vast majority of people in the U.K.

The NHS said the 999 number used to call for emergency ambulances wasn’t affected.

If you want a Starbucks coffee, you can’t order ahead

People pining for a venti caramel macchiato or a grande frozen mango dragonfruit lemonade found Friday that they couldn’t order ahead from Starbucks online or with their cellphones Friday.

The coffee shop chain apologized for the problem and said it was serving customers in “a vast majority” of its stores and drive-thrus.

Courts in several U.S. states are disrupted by the outage

BOSTON — Courts in Massachusetts and New York saw their operations disrupted Friday by the global internet outage.

A spokesperson for the Massachusetts judiciary said about half of its workstations were down while court transcription recording systems were not operating in a number of courthouses, resulting in delays in some court sessions.

Some court proceedings were also delayed in New York because of computer problems.

In Manhattan, a criminal court proceeding for Harvey Weinstein, who is charged with rape, started 90 minutes late because of disruptions to court and corrections computer systems.

In Southern California, Orange County Superior Court also reported technical issues.

Outage forces several US states to close driver’s license offices

AUSTIN, Texas — The internet outages forced Texas to close all of its driver’s license offices across the state, and New York’s Department of Motor Vehicles couldn’t process transactions online and in its offices Friday morning.

The Texas Department of Public Safety operates driver’s license offices in most of the state’s 254 counties. The agency issues, renews and updates driver licenses or state ID cards and provides driver education courses.

The department said in a statement that “there is no current estimate” on when the offices will reopen.

In New York, the DMV said that by Friday afternoon, some systems had been restored and that it could begin performing online transactions. However, some in-person services were still offline.

At least three of its DMV offices closed for the day because of the outage, according to the agency’s website.

Zackary Blaine, a 28-year-old living in the New York City suburbs, said he took Friday off work expecting to spend a chunk of the day at the DMV only to find security guards turning people away at the door of his local office.

“I’m not too stressed, but it’s kind of wild to think how much something like this impacts things,” Blaine said by phone later.

Internet Society leader says outages ‘will happen in the future’

SAN FRANCISCO — The head of a nonprofit group that promotes building the internet says outages like the major one affecting Microsoft and causing problems across the globe will happen in the future because of “our world of complex, interconnected systems.”

“The important part is how we learn from them and how we improve the resilience of our systems, so that similar issues do not happen again,” Andrew Sullivan, CEO of the nonprofit Internet Society said Friday.

The outages disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies across the world, but Sullivan said there was no loss of connectivity and data continued to flow.

“This was a failure of some systems using a specific operating system and a specific vendor’s management tools," he said. "Unfortunately, those systems were used widely and for many functions critical to people’s daily lives.”

Meanwhile, some cybersecurity experts are warning that organizations affected by the internet outage should be alert for scammers.

“Organizations should be aware and wary of that and making sure that when they’re talking about getting this problem remediated, that they’re talking to trusted organizations,” said Gartner analyst Eric Grenier. “Attackers will definitely prey on organizations as a result of this.”