Global outage: Check flight status before heading to MSP airport, officials urge

Molly Guthrey, Pioneer Press
Updated ·4 min read
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Travelers – and those picking up or dropping off travelers – are urged to check flight statuses before heading to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport this weekend.

This is due to the tech outage that was affecting services in the Twin Cities and around the world on Friday.

“We’re trying to make sure there is as little congestion as possible,” said Jeff Lea, spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, which operates the airport.

With the outage beginning overnight Thursday-Friday, the congestion built slowly across both MSP terminals along with parking areas and roads leading to the airport. It was a frustrating morning for travelers, Lea said, and each affected airline was working to get systems back up and passengers booked and rescheduled.

As of Friday evening, there had been 118 cancellations for both arriving and departing flights, although not all airlines were affected by the outage. On a social media post, Delta Air Lines, which is MSP’s second largest hub after Atlanta, said that more than 1,200 flights had been canceled on Friday.

Lea said there could be a “domino effect” for flights into the weekend; the public should check with their airlines for the latest flight status.

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop orders for Delta and United airlines just before noon on Friday.

John Welbes, a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, said at midday terminals were looking a lot more calm since the morning, though airlines were still working through cancellations.

“Just like a snowstorm, it can take a day or days to get back on track.”

Flight status can be monitored at nasstatus.faa.gov.

Other impacts

The outage also impacted Twin Cities services on the ground, including Metro Transit:

“We have experienced temporary disruptions to the systems customers use to access real-time information, trip planning tools, and our web store, among other applications,” Metro Transit reported on X on Friday morning. “These systems, as well as buses and trains, are currently operating as intended. We will continue to monitor.”

In the metro, Ramsey County reported impacts as well.

“Many Ramsey County computers are down as a result, and certain services may not be available at this time,” according to a post published Friday morning on the county’s X account. “We apologize for this inconvenience.”

The Minnesota Office of Higher Education said it also was experiencing outages that could cause disruptions on its website, phone lines and other applications.

In local media, WCCO’s programming was delayed due to the outage.

“The Microsoft outage is delaying the broadcast of WCCO This Morning,” the news outlet reported on X at 5:18 a.m. “We’re working to rectify the issue and go live on the air ASAP.”

The morning news program did proceed during that outage via Facebook Live.

What happened?

The technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air around the globe, a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.

An initial explanation about a content update — an explanation issued by George Kurtz, the chief executive of CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company at the heart of the worldwide Microsoft outage — was found lacking by some on social media.

“Bro just stopped the entire world and probably caused millions in damages and doesn’t even apologize,” wrote one commenter.

Kurtz later expanded his technical explanation to include an apology:

“Today was not a security or cyber incident,” Kurtz wrote. “Our customers remain fully protected. We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.

“As noted earlier, the issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed. There was an issue with a Falcon content update for Windows Hosts. For the latest information that we will continuously update, please refer to the CrowdStrike website (https://crowdstrike.com/blog/statement-on-windows-sensor-update/…), my posts on LinkedIn, and my posts on X. I will continue to provide updates to our community and the industry as they become available.”

Mac and Linux hosts were not impacted, CrowdStrike said.

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