I.T. outage affecting Richmond Airport, VCU Hospital

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — The widespread global I.T. outage early this morning is still causing significant disruptions across Virginia — impacting airlines, hospitals and other essential services.

The ripple effects of the outage were felt throughout the state as the day progressed.

“6:32 (a.m.), I was supposed to be in the air,” said Byron Miller, a passenger at Richmond International Airport (RIC) in Henrico County whose Spirit Airlines flight was canceled. “I’d be on the ground in Vegas right now,” he said.

Miller is one of many travelers affected by the disruption. Out of 156 flights scheduled to leave RIC on Friday, more than 50 were delayed and over 30 were cancelled.

“On a normal Friday with these kinds of weather conditions, we might see one or two (cancellations),” said Troy Bell, RIC’s Director of Marketing and Air Service Development. “When you add it all up, it’s about 20% of our flights affected one way or another.”

Bell said the effects of the outage have been uneven across different airlines.

“Several areas of airlines requested a global ground stop,” he said. “While they’re asking for it, some other carriers… They were able to push and go.”

In addition to airport disruptions, the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles was closed in the morning and Dominion Energy experienced difficulties receiving customer calls early in the day. Both of those issues are now fixed.

“Technology is generally our friend, but you got to have redundancy, because if the technology goes down, chaos can be the result,” said Sen. Tim Kaine about the outage.

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Health released the following statement describing how it had been affected by the outage:

“We have minimal access to computers, which impacts everything. Charting, provider orders, receiving/sending lab samples, and medication/blood products through the tube station, etc.”

Despite these disruptions, Bell remained optimistic about the resolution of the situation.

“Despite what you see behind me, it looks like it’s on its way to resolution,” he said.

Microsoft has reported the outage fix has been deployed, but for now — places like airports will continue to navigate the ongoing disruptions.

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