Chicago’s two airports and Metra trains were hit with cancellations and delays amid a global technology outage that grounded flights, knocked banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air Friday around the world.
By 8:45 a.m. Friday, 104 flights had been cancelled at O’Hare International Airport and 244 were delayed, according to flight tracking firm FlightAware. At Midway, where Southwest Airlines is dominant, six flights were cancelled and 73 were delayed.
But that was a fraction of the 2,691 flights that had been cancelled globally around 7 a.m., according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.
In a statement, American Airlines, one of the two main carriers at O’Hare, said it was able to reestablish operations by 4 a.m. Central Standard Time. But the airline still expected delays and cancellations Friday.
American was allowing customers with disrupted flights to rebook with no fees, or to cancel their flights or be refunded.
The outage was also affecting Chicago-area commuter rail, though ridership is typically lighter on Fridays than on other days of the week. Metra’s three Union Pacific lines: the north, west and northwest, spokesman Michael Gillis said. The disruptions led to three cancellations on the UP Northwest line, and delays of up to 45 minutes. The UP West was delayed up to 25 minutes, and there were minor delays on the UP North line.
CTA bus and rail service was not affected by the outage. But the Ventra payment system was hit overnight, the CTA said, limiting customers who tried to add value to their cards via the app or Ventra machines. But by 8 a.m. both types of issues had been resolved and Ventra was operating normally.
The disruption affected companies and services around the world, and highlighted dependencies on software from a handful of providers.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack — and that a fix was on the way. The company said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
The Associated Press contributed.
