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Family stuck at Sky Harbor for close to 30 hours due to global technology outage

By
Updated  July 22, 2024 9:29pm MST
Travel News
FOX 10 Phoenix

Global outage: Family stuck at Sky Harbor for nearly 30 hours

PHOENIX - It was supposed to be a routine cybersecurity update, but four days later, travelers are still impacted by the global technology outage.

An Arizona family spent close to 30 hours at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport with hopes of making it to their family reunion in Boston. 

The delays are something the Ibe family has dealt with for two days with two kids under five at Sky Harbor.

For them, and many others who were traveling this weekend, a global tech outage wasn’t on their itinerary.

"When are the kids going to nap, when the kids are going to eat, you know, do we stay here?" Geoff Ibe said.

As parents of two young kids, the Ibes say they try to plan for all the possibilities.

"We knew that not being on time was going to be an obvious thing, but having a delay that was more than two days was definitely surprising," Geoff said.

Four tickets were booked on Thursday night – a five-hour direct flight from Phoenix to Boston.

"The whole experience was about, I would say about 28, 30 hours," Geoff said.

Passengers on Delta flight 1728 slept in the airport Thursday night, hoping to take off on Friday morning.

"We were told to kind of wait for an update, which is around five or 6 a.m.," Geoff said.

He and his family stuck it out, hoping they would make it in time for his nephew's 1st birthday party on Saturday.

6 a.m. came, and the flight was pushed back another 12 hours. The airline had no choice but to allow people to deplane.

"There was no food on the plane. There were people that were hungry, which is why they let people off the third time," Geoff said.

Going through the boarding process again, they were hopeful.

"They said everything was cleared, all the name checks were cleared, the baggage was cleared, our fuel was in the plane," he said.

Hours later, the plane remained at the gate.

The Ibe family tried to book on another airline that wasn't impacted by the outage. But, another road block – they had no access to their luggage, which included the kids' carseats.

"It's tough. So we called it, called the trip off then. Of course, it was hard to make that decision," he said.

If you're traveling soon, make sure to check with your airline to learn about any delays or cancelations.

More on the outage

A global technology outage on the morning of July 19 grounded flights, knocked banks offline and media outlets off-air in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack. It added that the problem happened when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.