Global IT outage temporarily grounds flights at DIA Friday morning, causing headaches for travelers

DENVER — A global technology outage grounded some flights at Denver International Airport early Friday morning.

"It'll be a day that people remember and i was just unlucky to be traveling this day... Be patient today and be nice to the crew that are trying to fix the problem," Melissa McGibbon who was traveling to Salt Lake City amid the outage, told Denver7.

DIA posted on the social media site X just after 4:15 a.m., saying economy parking lots experienced issues with dispensing tickets and the lots were closed. But garages remained open.

The economy lots reopened around an hour later.

By 5:45 a.m., travelers looking at the departures page on DIA's website, still saw nothing updated to reflect delays due to the tech issues. It was a similar case on FlightAware.

The site only reported 95 delays and 45 cancellations in and out of DIA at 5:53 a.m.

Delta Airlines posted on the social media site X, it paused its global flight schedule Friday morning due to the technology issues impacting several airlines and business around the world.

"Customers with flights scheduled for Friday should continue checking their flight status via the Fly Delta app and delta.com," the airline said.

Delta said it would issue a travel waiver that would allow customers scheduled to travel Friday morning to manage changes to their itinerary via delta.com or the Fly Delta app.

American Airlines said the company re-established operations just before 4 a.m.

JetBlue did not have issues with flights, according to the airline's corporate communications team. The company sent Denver7 the following statement:

"JetBlue’s operations remain normal, and we are not experiencing any system-wide delays or cancellations. While our operational systems were not impacted by this outage, customers should monitor their flight status and build in extra time in the event that this outage has impacted specific airports due to outages at other airlines, airport operators, or government agencies."

Long lines formed at DIA's American Airlines check-in counter just before 6 a.m. Friday.

"My family worked for American so I’m very loyal to them, but its really kind of shocking there's no communication not letting us know what's happening," Heather Ragan told Denver7.

Colorado Springs Airport posted on the social media site X just before 6 a.m. that all airlines were operational but experiencing some delays and cancellations. The airport asked travelers to contact their airline directly for any changes in flight status.

By 7:40 a.m., the boards at DIA that display flight departure times were still offline.

Just before 8 a.m., FlightAware had updates with 209 flights delayed in and out of DIA, and more than 65 canceled.

While ground stops were lifted around 7:40 a.m. and operations had stabilized, according to DIA, the delays would still impact travelers.

By 9:45 a.m., FlightAware numbers jumped to 352 flights delayed and 89 canceled in and out of DIA.

"We were supposed to leave at 11:59am, Denver time, getting home by 6pm," said Gayla Sanders who was headed to Florida, "Now we're leaving at 11:59pm going to JFK."

A spokesperson for Denver International Airport said the impact to airport specific services was minimal. TSA and FAA were not impacted, DIA did however need to close their economy lot for several hours when the machines stopped printing out tickets. That issue has since been fixed.

"We're always looking at ways we can improve. So even though this was an issue that came in from a third party, we can always take a look at every opportunity to see how we can perhaps, you know, operate in the future in different ways," said Michael Konopasek, spokesperson with Denver International Airport.

As of 5:30pm, there were more than 900 total delays at DIA and 122 cancellations.

The outage started late Thursday night. United States Secretary of State Pete Buttigieg made a statement on the social media site X Thursday just before 10:15 p.m. regarding the impacts to Frontier Airlines.

He posted later in the afternoon encouraging passengers to visit flightrights.govwhich breaks down what the airlines are responsible for when it comes to compensation.

The disruption stems from a reported defect with a Microsoft Windows update sent out, according to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. One of the company's main products is CrowdStrike Falcon, described on its website as a platform that protects against possible cybersecurity threats.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the IT issues causing the worldwide Microsft outage were identified and "a fix has been deployed." Kurtz stressed, the outage was not caused by a security incident or cyberattack.

Mac and Linux users were not impacted, according to Kurtz.

Numerous police departments across the United States have reported that the worldwide technology outage affected their 911 service Friday morning, according to Scripps News.

The Colorado Springs 911 Emergency Communications Center was one of them.

The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, Douglas County Sheriff's Office and Jefferson County Sheriff's Office told Denver7 they were not aware of any issues.

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Colorado law enforcement report few impacts amid global technology outage

Katie Parkins