Tallahassee Democrat
The global software glitch and ground stop that brought gridlock to airports worldwide also cancelled and delayed some flights at Tallahassee International Airport.
A visit to the airport's website reveals error messages for its departures and arrivals schedule.
A 6 a.m. Delta flight out of TLH to Atlanta was cancelled outright. Two later flights to Georgia's capital city were also delayed by an hour or two.
American Airlines was also hit with delays. A flight to Dallas was delayed by two hours. Others to Miami, Charlotte and Dallas saw delays of less than an hour. By about 9:30 a.m., a reporter at the airport said it was largely business as usual. A Jet Blue flight was scheduled to arrive early, and planes were departing and arriving after short delays.
Deputy Director of Tallahassee International Airport Vanessa Spaulding said that the airport's operations team was able to work with the City of Tallahassee's Technology and Innovation division to get the airport back up and running rather quickly.
When asked if the airport's size played a factor she said she was sure of it, "our size definitely works in our advantage, we are able to quickly respond (to the issue)."
Spaulding advises passengers to reach out to their airlines over cancellations, delays and their flight status and to arrive two hours early to the airport. By 10:30 p.m., the airport website had replaced the error message for departures and arrivals with links to carrier web sites.
Jenny Pringle, who was flying out of Tallahassee Friday morning, was worried about the outage affecting her flight, baggage check and security.
But it didn't affect her carrier, she said, so things were running smoothly.
Pringle was on her way to Cancun, Mexico, for a wedding.
"The rest of the family went yesterday...thank goodness...and some of them probably would have been impacted," she said.
What went wrong?
According to USA TODAY, a major cybersecurity firm has blamed a faulty system update amid a Friday morning technology outage that disrupted the operations of major airlines, media companies, banks, medical facilities and telecoms firms around the globe.
Crowdstrike, a U.S. firm that advertises being used by over half of Fortune 500 companies, said one of its recent content updates had a defect that impacted Microsoft's Windows Operating System, adding that the incident was "not a security incident or cyberattack."
"The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed," said a statement from Crowdstrike. Microsoft, meanwhile, said "the underlying cause has been fixed," but that residual impacts continue to affect some of its Microsoft 365 apps and services.
In the U.S.,hundreds of flights were canceled Friday morning. American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines were among those whogrounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft said it resolved a cloud-services-related outage that impacted several low-cost carriers.
Public transit systems in the U.S. reported impacts. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in Washington D.C. said its "website and some of our internal systems are currently down," but that trains and buses were running as scheduled. In New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority also said it's buses and trains were unaffected but that "some MTA customer information systems are temporarily offline due to a worldwide technical outage."
Across the globe, the outages disrupted London's Stock Exchange, caused major train delays in the U.K., sent British broadcaster Sky News off-air, forced medical facilities in Europe to cancel some services and caused disruptions at airports in Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong and India.
911 not affected in Tallahassee and Leon County
While other communities reported issues with their 911 emergency systems, Florida's capital city sounded an all clear on that front.
Shonda Knight, a Leon County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, said the agency’s main building and the Detention Facility have seen computer issues but that the impact has been minimal.
“We have some computers down but all of our major functions are operational,” she said. “Our patrol unit is not impacted and 911 operations should be good. It’s not affecting our ability to respond to calls.”
The Sheriff’s Office’s website was not working as of Friday morning. Knight said some employees couldn’t access email. IT crews were working at the jail and the main building to restore computer functions.
“That’s the priority right now,” she said.
Kianna Gilley, a spokeswoman for Leon County, confirmed that there were no issues with 911 or the ambulance service.
“911 was unaffected,” she said. “EMS is fully functional. And now we’re assessing county systems.”
How Tallahassee Police and FSU are working through Windows woes
The Tallahassee Police Department is operating “business as usual and still going to calls for service,” TPD spokesperson Alicia Hill said, but the agency is experiencing various outages.
Some officers’ mobile computers are impacted. “It seems like pockets of people are affected, not widespread,” Hill said.
The records department and the property and evidence department are both dealing with down technology. Distributing records to requesters could be “significantly slowed down” depending on when the outages are resolved, she said. Retrieving property that was impounded overnight could also be delayed while the technological difficulties persist.
“We’re just going through other available resources to make sure everyone can still work,” Hill said.
Florida State University, meanwhile, sent out an email to employees advising them of a "Windows Outage."
"Windows devices are currently experiencing a world wide issue causing devices to not start properly. Users are reportedly unable to log in to Windows devices. If you are unable to login to your device, try rebooting at login," the FSU IT website states. "If the issue still persists, please contact your IT Professional for assistance. ITS is working with vendors to resolve this issue. We appreciate your ongoing patience as we work to resolve the issue as soon as possible."
Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare also noted on X that they are unaffected by the outage.
"We are happy to report that the Microsoft and CrowdStrike global outage is NOT affecting patient care at TMH, including hospital operations and TMH Physician Partners clinics. We are fully operational and seeing patients as normal."
How the global Microsoft glitch is affecting Leon County government
County Administrator Vince Long emailed county commissioners Friday morning to update them on the situation, saying there was “no indication” that the outage compromised any county data or security and that the county’s IT team was working to address any outage.
“Regarding County services, the vast majority of our servers have been manually updated, rebooted, and are now functioning normally,” Long said. “All County email and phone systems are fully operational. Our priority has been ensuring the functionality of Leon County Emergency Medical Services and 9-1-1 call-taking and dispatch, all of which are operational.”
He added that as county employees start their day, some of their desktop computers may still be affected and need updates or IT support.
“However, the County has many alternatives in place to continue providing services to citizens, even if some work area computers are affected,” Long wrote.
