Tech glitch strands Black travelers, disrupts medical and emergency services

By Tierra Stone and Lizzie Suber
AFRO Interns
tierrastone@afro.com
lizziesuber@afro.com

Banks, emergency service operations, airports and more were impacted July 19, after cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike released a faulty update to Microsoft Windows systems around the globe.

The tech glitch also disrupted operations within Microsoft Azure, a cloud platform managed by Microsoft. The impact on Microsoft Azure led to problems far beyond individual computers: everything from payment systems to 911 operations have been affected. 

According to Microsoft, the outages were noticed as early as 12:09 a.m EST on July 19, causing a traffic jam at the intersection of technology and the plethora of industries that rely on it to function. The United States and other countries, such as South Africa, Great Britain and parts of Asia were also affected.

For many Black travelers across the globe, the issue meant delayed and canceled flights, ruined travel plans and a mountain of stress. 

“I was originally with Spirit at 9:30 a.m. I got here around 7 a.m.,” said Aikia Martin, a Baltimore resident, while sitting inside of the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) airport on July 19. “Around 8:45 a.m. they canceled the flight.”

Martin was forced to wait with her two sons for several hours at BWI due to the failed system update. Her original plans were dashed by an airline employee’s simple instruction.

“She literally got up and said, ‘If you have a flight to Orlando, step out of line!’ and that was it,” recalled Martin. “Then we had to wait around until the system got back up. I got back in line a couple of times. A few times it wasn’t back up yet. Finally, it was up they didn’t have a flight available until tomorrow at 8:30 p.m.

“I had to cancel that flight, get a refund and then book with Southwest— and they didn’t have anything until 6:40 ,” she said.

Ultimately, Martin was able to mitigate the damage to her travel plans with the evening flight out of Baltimore at 6:40 p.m. on July 19.

Maryland natives Quinton and Megan Lathan were caught in Orlando when their travel woes began. The Baltimore-based entrepreneurs were supposed to get back to Baltimore on a flight from Orlando around 10 p.m. on Thursday, July 18. Instead, they were delayed until about 2:30 a.m. and put on a flight that didn’t land in Baltimore until roughly 4:30 a.m. on Friday. 

Quinton Lathan said one glaring point of concern were the food offerings while the chaos unfolded in Florida. 

“When we were stuck in the Orlando airport, all of the restaurants were all closed. If I had diabetes or something — we were left with no water or food. You force a person to jeopardize their health. They can’t leave the airport and there’s nothing open, not even a vending machine,” he said. 

Megan Lathan said when the pair arrived at BWI airport the scene was crowded but tension was surprisingly low. 

“Everyone was calm and tired,” she said. “Everyone was very upset, fed up— and tired.” 

The Lathans landed in Baltimore on July 19 to spend time with friends and family at a funeral before heading right back out of town via plane. They weren’t sure if their Friday afternoon flight was delayed or canceled, so they cut time with their family and friends short. 

“They weren’t updating online and we couldn’t get anyone to answer the phones. We could have sat with our families a few more hours,” lamented Quinton Lathan, standing next to his wife, both clad in funeral white garb.

When Sarge Wade spoke with the AFRO he was still unsure of how he would make his way to Cancun, Mexico.

“Earlier today when the cyber situation happened we learned that the flight had been delayed around 11 ,” said the San Francisco native.

Later, Wade said he was only given 30 minutes notice before his flight was canceled. 

“I had a feeling that it was going to be canceled, and I knew I was going to be stuck here,” he said. “I’m either going to stay here or wait until the airline gives us a hotel, and then I’ll head out in the morning.”

Wade shared how uneasy he felt about the situation and expressed his concerns about other services that could’ve been affected too. 

“It’s concerning because you realize that they don’t have any backup plan. It’s disturbing to know that it could affect us in this manner. And if it can affect airlines and transportation I wonder what other important services like health care or emergency services could be affected by such an incident,” he said.

In fact, hospitals were on the list of affected industries. 

The American Hospital Association (AHA)  released a cybersecurity advisory on July 19 about the impact to their systems. 

“While we continue to monitor the situation closely, we are hearing from hospitals and health systems that the impact varies widely. Some have experienced little to no impact while others are dealing directly with some disruptions to medical technology, communications and third-party service providers,” said AHA National Advisor for Cybersecurity and Risk John Riggi. “These disruptions are resulting in some clinical procedure delays, diversions or cancellations. Impact is also being felt indirectly as a result of local emergency call centers being down. Impacted hospitals are working hard to implement manual restoration of systems and the CrowdStrike patch.”

Reggie added that “affected hospitals have also implemented downtime procedures to ensure that disruptions to patient care are minimized or avoided to the extent possible.”

CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm servicing customers around the world, said the bug responsible for the chaos was not a cyberattack and a solution has been reached, but problems still remain. The company released an official statement on their website. 

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This was not a cyberattack…. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels,” the company wrote.

In the beginning stage of the outage, Microsoft 365 released a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, with background information on how the incident began.

“We’re aware of an issue with Windows 365 Cloud PC’s caused by a recent update to CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor software. This is being communicated under WP821561 in the admin center,” Microsoft wrote. 

Geroge Kurtz, president and CEO of CrowdStrike released a statement on X issuing an apology not only to consumers but to all people that were affected by the glitch. 

“Today was not a security or cyber incident. Our customers remain fully protected. We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” said Kurtz. “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.”

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