Charlotte airport travelers still impacted by Thursday night tech outage

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — Charlotte airport hallways are still packed as flyers continue to work through issues stemming from Thursday night’s global tech outage. The blackout caused thousands of delays and cancellations at airports across the country.

Courtney Williams’ problems started Friday night.

“Last night, everything was good with the flight. It was in the green light. Everything was great. And then this morning, I got the text about 1115 saying that it was canceled,” Williams told Queen City News during a Zoom interview.

She was headed to Orlando with her toddler. Williams says confusion started right before the cancellation notification when she received a text message about a voucher for food or drinks.

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“They said in the text that I would get an email to know what to do, and that was at 11:15 a.m. today. And I still haven’t got a text or email from anybody on the airlines,” Williams said.

And trying to fix the issue has been even more complicated.

“I haven’t been able to get a hold of anyone to know what’s going on. If I’m going to get a refund or if I can reschedule, I’ve tried to get on their app and do a chat because when you call, you don’t get any information on that,” she said.

Williams eventually decided to drive her vehicle to Orlando — and says, fortunately, she didn’t lose a lot of money from the canceled Spirit flight.

But not every passenger dealing with the ongoing impacts of the tech outage has the option of ditching the airport chaos for a road trip. Dorothy Slack and her husband were hoping to get back home to Dallas after vacationing in Cancun, but their flight was canceled.

They were able to book a trip from Miami to Charlotte before getting stuck in the Queen City.

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“Then Miami is just a nonstop 1:00, 3:00, 430, 530. I don’t even remember what time we originally got out of Miami, but then we got to Charlotte, North Carolina. And so, now our flight will not leave here until tonight at 10:00,” Slack said.

But their problems didn’t stop there. The couple opted to rent a car but ran into an even bigger issue.

Each rental car company at the Charlotte airport was either booked, or the car needed to be returned to the Charlotte location, leaving several families to camp out at the airport.

“We did not know. It was only to this extent. We just thought that, oh, okay, you know, a flight rerouted. I have $200 in my checking account and I can go back to work until possibly Wednesday,” Slack said.

The Department of Transportation announced new rules in April requiring airlines to automatically give cash refunds to passengers for canceled and significantly delayed flights.

Both Williams and Slack say they’ve received nothing.

“We’re going have to pay a lot more frontier. So it’s just now we’re trying to figure out, do we wait for those flights or are we spending less waiting on those flights? Are we going to spend less by trying to find a rental car or bus or whatever?” she asked.

American Airlines, Charlotte’s largest flight provider, says it fully recovered from the global tech outage. FlightAware data shows there were at least 55 cancellations at Charlotte Douglas today, compared to more than 200 Friday.

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