‘Just trying to get away': Travelers lined up at PHL Airport seeking answers amid global tech outage

Flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world were impacted Friday morning by a global outage tied to security firm CrowdStrike that impacted Microsoft operating systems. Folks might have woken up and tried to log into their computers to find the dreaded "blue screen of death."

Planes in and out of Philadelphia International Airport were affected early Friday, July 19, 2024, due to tech problems tied to the global issue.

"Due to the global technology issue impacting multiple airlines, passengers should anticipate delays and cancellations today," PHL Airport wrote on X shortly after 9 a.m.

Due to the global technology issue impacting multiple airlines, passengers should anticipate delays and cancellations today. Please check with your airline for the latest flight status information before heading to the airport. pic.twitter.com/SYyBHuy1a9

— PHLAirport (@PHLAirport) July 19, 2024

The airport posted on social media earlier that people "check with your airline for the latest flight status information."

Multiple airlines are reporting system outages that are impacting flights at #PHLAirport and around the world.

Please check with your airline for the latest flight status information. pic.twitter.com/6SwOaXS0ip

— PHLAirport (@PHLAirport) July 19, 2024

People were lined up at bag check and some screens on the check-in screens showed error messages.

Léelo en español aquí.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on social media around 5:50 a.m. ET that it "is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines."

The FAA is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines. Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops until the issue is resolved. Monitor https://t.co/smgdqJN3td
for updates.

— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) July 19, 2024

Several airlines "requested FAA assistance with ground stops until the issue is resolved," the FAA said.

Around 6:15 a.m., American Airlines -- the major carrier out of PHL -- posted on X that as of 5 a.m., "we have been able to safely re-establish our operation."

Update for #PHLAirport @AmericanAir passengers. https://t.co/g7RE9ahBUJ

— PHLAirport (@PHLAirport) July 19, 2024

Spirit Airlines was also impacted and posted a statement on X.

Update for #PHLAirport @SpiritAirlines passengers. https://t.co/9DZRdcp8TO

— PHLAirport (@PHLAirport) July 19, 2024

People struggled to check in.

Despite the reassurance from the airport, FAA and airlines, travelers still were seeking answers for hours early Friday.

"I'm just trying to get away and this is just crazy," a traveler who had her Frontier flight canceled and was trying to then get to Texas for a family reunion on Delta told NBC10's Brenna Weick. "Praying for safe travels for everyone moving forward."

"It is confusing and scary," another traveler said after joking that "I finally had an opportunity to get caught in this. Everybody should experience this at least one time in their lives so they have a story to share that they got caught in the great 2024 cancellation."

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"It's an amazing opportunity to experience for the first time," he said. "We need to laugh about this."

"They got caught in the great 2024 cancellation." @BrennaWeickTV caught up with a traveler keeping a good sense of humor at @PHLAirport Friday morning amid issues stemming from the worldwide internet outage. https://t.co/HwFQ4MvCB1 pic.twitter.com/w8XnjjWH1w

— NBC10 Philadelphia (@NBCPhiladelphia) July 19, 2024

By Friday afternoon, "all airlines at this time are operational," PHL Airport CEO Atif Saeed said a news conference. "They are in recovery mode.

As of 12:30 p.m. Friday, a total of 87 flights had been canceled and another 126 flights were delayed, Saeed said. The airport CEO said they expected those numbers to still grow.

American Airlines was among the carriers offering waivers to frustrated travelers. American waived change fees for PHL flyers.

We have issued a travel waiver for our customers impacted by the vendor technology issue earlier this morning. You can check https://t.co/rZn1O8tOMy or the American Airlines app for the latest updates. https://t.co/lZNTwQOYlI

— americanair (@AmericanAir) July 19, 2024

Worldwide issues lead to problems in Philadelphia region

The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and major U.S. carriers including Delta and United.

There were also reports of issues at Philadelphia area hospitals and businesses, including places like supermarkets that use self checkout.

Even here at NBC10, we had to adjust to bring our morning newscast to get them out to viewers, coming on 30 minutes later than normal Friday morning.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz posted on the social media platform X that the company “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack," he wrote. "The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

NJ, Pa. 911 centers keeping emergency services going

Dispatchers and call takers at 911 centers in the area were able to keep operations going early Friday by using pen and paper.

The Gloucester County Emergency Management detailed what its dispatchers and first responders were dealing with shortly after midnight:

"Gloucester County Information Technology (IT) staff were alerted and immediately reported in to assist and troubleshoot," the county emergency management said in a Facebook post. "An all-call to off duty dispatch personnel was made as many additional dispatch positions were quickly staffed. These positions aided our night shift staff with the “pen and paper” call taking, records keeping, and resource tracking."

Delaware State Police said "public safety services remain fully operational."

"Our systems were impacted by a global IT outage overnight, not a cybersecurity incident," Delaware State Police said. "While we rework to restore all systems, some State services may experience delays. We appreciate your understanding and patience during this time."

Hospitals work to treat patients amid computer issues

Area hospitals worked to keep patients cared for amid the outage.

Penn Medicine's website appeared to be down early Friday morning, but was back online later in the morning with a message about the "major worldwide outage impacting Penn Medicine's systems and appointments."

"Appointments in some locations may need to be canceled and rescheduled today." Penn Medicine said. "We are making every effort to contact patients whose appointments need to be canceled. We will also contact you to reschedule your appointment as soon as possible. Penn experts are working to restore our usual operations ASAP."

Penn Medicine said it hospitals and emergency departments were "fully staffed and continuing to care for patients."

Temple University Hospital said that they had no issues amid the outage. However, a woman reached out to NBC10 to say that her scheduled mammogram through Temple Health on Friday morning was rescheduled due to tech issues with the machine.

Jefferson Health -- which operates Jefferson, Abington and other medical facilities -- had no comment about the potential impact of the outage.

Other health systems had various impacts from the outage:

"Like companies across the globe, while the Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage issue has impacted a number of software systems that Doylestown Hospital utilizes, overall patient care continues uninterrupted," Doylestown Health said in a statement.

Main Line Health said "patient safety is our first and foremost priority."

"Due to an unexpected worldwide downtime and computer issue, Main Line Health is currently experiencing unexpected system issues to clinical and non-clinical applications," Main Line Health spokesperson Phil Ellingsworth Jr. said in a statement.

"Main Line Health is not on divert and continues to accept patients for care," Ellingsworth continued. "All operations are continuing normally except for elected surgical procedures, which were paused this morning. We are continuously reviewing our operations to ensure we can continue to deliver safe, high-quality and equitable care."

Virtua Health spokesperson Julie Walsh said the large South Jersey health provider "implemented its backup systems and policies to enable both hospital and outpatient services to continue safely and with minimal interruption."

"Our electronic health records system (Epic) and MyChart patient portal are both functioning, after some brief disruptions overnight," Walsh said.. "Our teams continue to work diligently to ensure patient safety, which is our top priority, and to avoid any inconvenience for those we serve. While these issues are affecting convenience, such as delays in check-in and registration, the outage is not impacting essential patient care."

Got jury duty? Philadelphia courts close due to outage

In Philadelphia, it was business as usual for city workers even as the city dealt with some computer issues.

City tech officials first learned of the CrowdStrike outage around 2:30 a.m. Included in the problems were the "blue screen of death" on any city computers powered up on the network at the time, Philadelphia Chief Information Officer Melissa Scott said Friday afternoon.

"The city is aware of the international IT issue and is impacted. 9-1-1 and public safety and life safety systems remain functional," city spokesman Joe Grace said earlier in the day. "City officials continue to assess the full impact. City staff and employees are to still report to work to assist with critical support tasks related to the outage. More information will be made available as soon as it is available."

However, some impact was felt, including people reporting being unable to get records from City Hall Friday.

The City of Philadelphia is aware of the international IT issue and is impacted.

9-1-1 and life and public safety systems remain functional. We continue to assess the full impact.

— City of Philadelphia (@PhiladelphiaGov) July 19, 2024

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said that critical public safety functions like police, fire response, EMT services and 911 calls were all operational, the first-term Democrat said at a Friday afternoon news conference.

Parker said all city services "are being provided," but some on a limited basis.

"No one assumes that everything is fixed" Parker said. "We're going to keep at this until every computer system, every laptop and every component of our IT apparatus are working exactly the way that they should."

Philadelphia courts closed "due to worldwide technology disruptions."

"All cases that were scheduled for Friday, July 19, 2024 will be rescheduled," a statement from city courts said. "The public can contact the Court at our website Courts.phila.gov for new dates starting Monday,"

The courts website appeared down through much of Friday morning, so check back later.

"If you have been summoned for Jury Duty, you are excused and do not need to report today, Friday - July 19, 2024," the court system said.

Local leaders react to global outage

Philadelphia

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and city leaders released a joint statement about Friday's computer issues.

“We’re aware that residents and local businesses may have experienced some disruptions, and the City of Philadelphia has been hard at work since the early hours of this morning, responding to and handling this IT issue to ensure Philadelphia government operations were impacted as little as possible,” Mayor Cherelle Parker said. “All City departments and agencies are open for business, and services continue to be provided, with some services in limited operations today. I’m grateful to our Office of Innovation and Technology, our Office of Emergency Management, and every city, state and federal partner as they monitored this issue and worked to quickly resolve it. I appreciate our employees’ flexibility as they offered the best possible services in the context of this sudden challenge. Our public safety agencies all continued to operate and respond as needed to our citizens’ calls. We apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused and appreciate everyone’s patience.”  

Officials explained that the city was among the government municipalities that were impacted.

“Here at The Office of Emergency Management, we are fortunate that the city has a 24/7 dedicated watch desk, watching for all types of hazards even technological emergencies like we experienced today. We started to enact our procedures very quickly, called our other 24/7 functions including our police radio and fire communications to understand the extent of the outage and put our continuity of operations plan into place.” Dominick Mireles, Director of The Office of Emergency Management, stated.   

The city's Office of Emergency Management was quick to jump into action, officials explained.

“Today our City IT employees, OEM and all our public safety departments moved immediately into our normal standard operating procedures, whenever there is any kind of an emergency,” said Melissa Scott, Philadelphia's Chief Information Officer.

New Jersey

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy released a statement on the outage Friday evening.

"We activated our State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC) as of 3:00 a.m. in response to these disruptions and have provided guidance to relevant executive branch agencies on how to address the situation. We are also engaging county and local governments, 911 call centers, and utilities to assess the impact and offer our assistance," he said.

This story is developing and will be updated.