Philly airport passengers frustrated from delays, cancellations in major Microsoft outage

Frustration, anger and out-of-patience is the feeling of several passengers flying out of Philadelphia on Friday, after an overnight IT outage stormed through systems used by several airlines nationwide.

“They just cancelled my flight and rebooked me for a flight tomorrow morning,” said Sheila Ortiz, a passenger who was booked on a Delta flight to Portland. “I’m on the phone with Delta customer service, but I’ve been on hold for the past two and a half hours.”

Ortiz’s travel troubles are shared by several flyers who are occasionally getting updates on whether their flights have been cancelled. According to Flight Aware , an online company that tracks flights across the country, as of 10:32 a.m., 68 flights had been cancelled at Philadelphia International Airport . Terminal D, which services Alaska Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, Air Canada, Sun Country Airlines and Spirit Airlines was flooded with passengers waiting to check luggage or book a new flight after their original flight was cancelled.

“This is madness,” said Cathy Clay, a passenger flying to Dallas-Fort Worth with Frontier Airlines. “They gave me this card with a QR code after they cancelled my plane to DFW, and they tried to book me on a flight to Baltimore, but nothing’s flying out of there either.”

Several airlines posted on social media the status of their operations in relation to the outage. At 8:39 a.m., Delta wrote, “Delta has resumed some flights after a vendor technology issue impacting airlines and businesses globally. We’ve issued a travel waiver and customers can monitor and manage their itineraries on http://dl.aero/6014lrDLu or the Fly Delta app.”

A group of friends flying from Philadelphia to Atlanta said that their Delta flight was scheduled to take off at 10:21 a.m., but they received email notifications explaining that their flight was delayed three hours because the plane that was scheduled to fly them to Hartsfield International, had not yet left Atlanta, the global headquarters of the airline and the city with Delta’s largest hub and most-traveled airport in its operations.

Passengers flying out are encouraged to check their flight status on a regular basis and get to the airport in advanced with enough time to park, check luggage and go through TSA checkpoints.

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