Tech outage causes chaos for weary travelers at Sea-Tac

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport absolutely felt the impact of the worldwide tech outage .

The norm at Sea-Tac is long lines at security checkpoints; the snaking lines throughout the terminal are usually full of people. But on Friday morning, the script was different, with lines at the ticketing stands of major airlines.

Delta had a line for rebooking that stretched through the terminal, all due to the outage.

“This is terrible,” said Debbie Barenborg as she waited to rebook her canceled flight.

Scott Sanders, who lives in Snoqualmie, was a passenger on a flight headed east. He boarded the jet around mid-evening Thursday and was on it around 10 p.m. when announcements came that the flight was delayed.

He said ultimately, it was canceled, and when he and the other passengers got off the jet, they saw the impact of the outage right in the terminal.

“It was kinda sad to see there were a lot of families and small children that were just lying on the ground with blankets. You could tell they had been there for hours,” said Sanders.`

Sanders took videos of gates at Sea-Tac and counted himself among the lucky passengers. Walking through the terminal, blank information screens appeared to be the norm, along with weary stranded travelers.

Sanders even captured images of airport staff bringing out bottled water, since shops and restaurants were closed. He eventually left between 2:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. and spoke to KIRO 7 via Zoom at 4 a.m. to detail his ordeal with the outage.

“It’s scary how susceptible we are. It would seem so minor but would have a major impact on everybody’s lives,” said Sanders.

Luiz Lucchesi is a Brazilian national who said he was stranded at Sea-Tac.

“I’m on the phone right now, waiting for an answer on the other side,” said Lucchesi.

The worldwide computer systems outage stranded passengers and flights around the globe, but the impact truly hit at a micro level for Lucchesi.

The Brazilian trying to get back to Sao Paulo was trying to get from Seattle to Washington D.C., and then onto Brazil.

“We depend on technology and it scares us when something like that happened. Hopefully, I am down on the floor, not in the air,” said Lucchesi.

At Sea-Tac, thousands of passengers were trying to figure out what to do after computer glitches grounded some of the country’s biggest carriers.

Security lines felt short after some passengers gave up on waiting for a new flight. Debbie Barenborg was exasperated with the whole experience.

“It’s…you’ve got international flights that have been canceled and so I understand it’s global,” she said.

Others were in long lines to rebook. The line for the ticket counter at Delta grew all morning, eventually stretching far through the terminal.

Barenborg was lucky to be near the front when she spoke to KIRO 7, but was clearly frustrated.

“The Delta flight was canceled, so I’ve got to rebook, hopefully on either Alaska. I understand Alaska is working… it’s not a good situation,” she said.

As the airlines started to resume operations around 6 a.m., some were concerned about getting where they wanted to go.