While mass flight cancellations continued to cause headaches for thousands of passengers at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Atlanta hotels, businesses and tourist attractions disrupted by a global technology outage on Friday appeared to be returning to normal Saturday morning.
A faulty security update pushed out by the cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike in the wee hours of Friday morning was responsible for the global meltdown, which crippled the Microsoft Windows systems that countless industries and government agencies rely on. CrowdStrike said in a statement it was “deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption” and deployed a fix, which by Saturday morning appeared to have resolved problems for many customers.
The Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) was among the many state agencies whose systems were knocked offline Friday. On Saturday morning, operations at the DDS location on Whitehall Street, just south of downtown Atlanta, appeared to be running smoothly.
Customers like Atlanta resident David Gary Jr., 32, who had been turned away from the same location on Friday due to the information technology (IT) outage, also reported no issues. Unaware of the IT problems, Gary said he arrived at DDS’ Whitehall St. location around 9 a.m. on Friday to get his license reinstated, only to find out that all of the agency’s services were down.
“I was pretty frustrated to not know,” he said.
On Saturday morning, he said he was in and out in five minutes with his license.
A DDS employee declined to say whether any of its services were still impaired by the CrowdStrike glitch, but there was no line inside the building and the waiting room crowd was sparse at 8:30 a.m. Saturday.
Credit: Steve Schaefer /
Credit: Steve Schaefer /
Atlanta locations of the coffee chain Starbucks, whose mobile ordering and payment services were knocked offline Friday, also appeared to be rebounding on Saturday.
Zar McMann, an employee at a Starbucks on Ponce de Leon Avenue across from Ponce City Market, said the restaurant’s operations were back to normal on Saturday. McMann said there was a silver lining for the Ponce location stemming from Friday’s technology struggles: Sales were up for the day, which she attributed to having more customers forced to come inside to order.
“It was like a little cheat code for us,” McMann added.
The situation was less upbeat at Hartsfield-Jackson International, where many stranded passengers spent the night Friday into Saturday, sleeping on chairs and walkways in the atrium, the passenger greeting area and around baggage claim carousels.
As Delta Air Lines’ largest hub and the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson International is one of the global epicenters for impacts from the CrowdStrike outage.
Overall, as of midday Saturday, more than 1,700 flights were canceled in the United States.
By just after noon eastern time, Delta had cancelled more than 500 of its Saturday flights, roughly 15% of what the company had scheduled. More than 800 Delta flights were also delayed, according to FlightAware.com.
In a statement Saturday morning, Delta apologized to customers whose travel plans were disrupted and said it was “working around the clock to get customers where they need to be.” For customers’ whose flights were cancelled Friday or Saturday, the company is offering travel waivers allowing them to make a one-time change to their itinerary, as well as meal vouchers and hotel accommodations, where available, for passengers facing lengthy delays.
In a message posted to the website X Saturday afternoon, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg reminded stranded passengers — and warned airlines — that customers who do not want to rebook their travel can ask for a refund.
“I am hearing reports of some airlines only offering flight credits to passengers for cancelled flights,” Buttigieg wrote. “Let me be clear — you are entitled to get your money back promptly if your flight is cancelled and you don’t take a rebooking.”
With airlines forced to reposition planes and personnel while after the IT disaster, it could be several days before the kinks are fully worked out, meaning travelers should expect disruptions.
Some major Atlanta hotels and tourist attractions reported their issues from the tech fiasco had abated.
A spokesman for the Georgia Aquarium, which experienced snags with its online ticketing system Friday, said Saturday those problems were resolved.
A spokeswoman at the front desk of the Hyatt Regency Atlanta said a problem with its guest check-in system had also cleared up.
All of the city’s major hospitals were open and while some were experiencing lingering issues over the weekend, none were reporting widespread disruptions.
In a statement, Emory Healthcare spokeswoman Jennifer Phillips said all of its hospitals and clinics were open and that staff were “working diligently around the clock to get systems operating at their full capacity.”
“We expect to have full clinical capacity on Monday and deliver all scheduled and emergent care,” Phillips added.
- Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi contributed to this story.
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