Spokane Airport Grapples with delays, cancellations in face of worldwide tech outage

Cannon Barnett, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.
·1 min read

Jul. 19—Airlines everywhere experienced delays, cancellations and premature landings Friday, including the Spokane International Airport.

In the early morning, a faulty tech update put out by CrowdStrike caused IT systems on Windows devices across the world to fail, leaving businesses scrambling to maintain operations.

As of 4 p.m. Friday, dozens of flights from Spokane experienced delay, and three Delta flights were canceled.

Stuart Steiner, assistant professor and expert in cybersecurity at Eastern Washington University, said that he has never seen any glitch have as much impact as this one.

Steiner himself had a doctor's appointment canceled due to the system being inaccessible, and "just barely" was able to check in for his Saturday flight because of technical difficulties.

Alannah Toft, spokesperson for the Spokane International Airport, declined to comment on the status of the airport as a whole, stating that individual airlines should be contacted.

Alaska, Delta, American Airlines, Allegiant and United Airlines did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

Sun Country Airlines said via voicemail that they are offering free flight rescheduling and full refunds for those whose flights were canceled this morning.

Southwest Airlines stated via email that while they were not directly affected by the outage, they encourage customers to continue to monitor their flight status as the entire aviation system recovers.