HENRICO COUNTY, Va. -- Much of the world has faced online disarray as a widespread technology outage affected companies and services across industries — grounding flights, knocking banks and hospital systems offline and media outlets off air.
At the heart of the massive disruption is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that says the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows — with the company noting that the issue was not a security incident or cyberattack.
The outage impacted travelers at Richmond International Airport on Friday.
“It certainly adds a little distress to see if our flight is going to leave or not,” said Michael Larkin, who was flying out of RIC.
There were at least 14 cancellations and many other flights were delayed as of Friday evening at the airport in Henrico County.
And that number nearly quadrupled when looking at flight cancellations out of Washington Dulles and Regan International.
The consequences of the global outage are catching the attention of lawmakers who are calling for change.
“These platforms are subjective to accidental glitches but they are also subjected to cyberattacks who want to create chaos," Sen. Tim Kaine. "We need to make sure we are protecting our infrastructure from such attacks, but you have got to have redundancy because if technology goes down chaos can be result.”
Despite the delays, many travelers are taking it in stride.
“Everyone has been really helpful to each other and explaining what is going on," Larkin said. "A little bit of camaraderie of being in the same situation.”
Airport officials encouraged people to monitor their flights online and call their airline directly for additional information.
Travelers were warned of potentially longer than normal delays at the airport because of the people who were rebooked.
This is a developing story. Email the CBS 6 Newsroom if you have additional information to share.
