Hundreds of passengers delayed at MSY amid global IT outage

KENNER, La. ( WGNO ) — Across the country, a widespread technology outage is affecting companies and public services, knocking hospitals and OMV systems offline and grounding flights.

“They are not sure of how long it may be, but we are supposed to still make it there,” said traveler Charlotte Jones.

Many like Jones stood in long lines stranded as they waited hours for updates on when their plane would take off.

“I am not going to let anything stop us from celebrating in Vegas for my birthday. I’m really excited, so yes we are going to have a great time even though we have delays,” said Jones.

The disruption is due to CrowdStrike, a cyber security agency, issuing an update to computers running Microsoft Windows. Dante Ness says it’s frustrating and is already looking for other options.

“If the flight gets canceled and they say tomorrow, we are probably going to make the drive, but I know it’s affecting a lot of people. We are going to just have fun, so I am not too worried about it,” said Ness.

The CEO of the company apologized for the inconvenience, saying a fix was on the way. Professor of Computer Sciences at LSU Abe Baggili says it shows how dependent companies are on their security providers.

“When need to start thinking about what the relationship with a vendor looks like. Whether we should trust and have an update automatically installed in our system specifically in areas of critical importance to us,” said Baggili. “Should organizations test updates before they just install them blindly and trust them from the vendor? Second, how did this happen on the vendor side? Why did they submit something that had buggy code to all of the people using the software,” said Baggili.

CrowdStrike says they do not believe this was a cyber attack. Most airlines have resumed their normal flight operations.

MSY officials are urging passengers to be patient as they try to work through the problem.

This is a developing story. Check back with WGNO for more updates as the day continues.

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