Airplanes grounded, slots down: Las Vegas works to recover from tech outage

An outage of Microsoft systems caused ripple effects and service disruptions globally — grounding flights, shutting down slot machines in Las Vegas and causing system problems at all types of businesses.

At the heart of the massive disruption is CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that provides software to scores of companies worldwide. The company says the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows, and that the issue behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

CrowdStrike said a fix was deployed and they were working through remaining disruptions. Disarray continued hours after the problem was first detected at some banks, health care systems, emergency services, transportation providers and retailers around the country. Las Vegas was not spared: some casinos, airlines and other shops dealt with outages Thursday night and into Friday.

A Microsoft spokesperson said the company was working with customers to work through congestion and disruption effects. By midday in Las Vegas, many business operations showed signs of normalcy, though some disruptions continued.

The Biden administration said the White House is in regular contact with CrowdStrike officials and that it was working with federal agencies to assess the event’s impact.

Airport disruptions

Harry Reid International Airport saw long lines Friday morning as major airlines dealt with the tech outage.

Data from flight tracking website FlightAware showed the airport fared better than many others worldwide, but that didn’t take the sting out of the outages at Reid. Travelers slept on the floor with their luggage nearby and waited in long lines.

Sylvia Wood, who had come from Richmond for the NAACP’s 115th National Convention and booked a flight for 10 p.m. Thursday so she could gamble, said she had gotten on her Spirit flight but had been told to get off, initially because of a smell on the plane.

A Spirit employee told passengers to go home, she said, but “everybody said we don’t live here.”

She was frustrated, because she said if she had known about the issues ahead of time, she could have stayed at her hotel.

“I will never — and you can capitalize never — fly Spirit again,” she said.

According to FlightAware, there were 229 flight delays — about 28 percent of Friday’s schedule — and 48 cancellations by late afternoon at Reid. There were 40,974 delays worldwide and 10,525 within the United States. A total of 4,576 flights were canceled globally, 2,911 within the United States.

Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air’s website was inaccessible early Friday but appeared to be back up by late afternoon.

“A third-party software system issue is impacting computer systems around the world, including Allegiant’s,” an airline representative said in a statement Friday morning.

Allegiant has around 146 flights a week with its schedule heavily weighted with Friday arrivals and departures.

Southwest Airlines, Reid International’s busiest commercial air carrier, reported its operations were minimally affected by the outage and had no statement.

Airline systems were back up at Harry Reid by Friday afternoon, airport officials said, but the airport remained very busy.

Airport officials advised travelers to monitor their flight status. On site, they extended several food and beverage options — at Ruby’s Diner and Chili’s To Go, both in D gates, and Fresh Attractions in all gates — for 24 hours to accommodate the influx of travelers.

Elsewhere in Vegas

The outage also affected the airwaves — Las Vegas’ NBC affiliate and its parent company dropped local programming around 10:30 p.m. Thursday. There was no 11 p.m. newscast, but reports returned to air early Friday when anchor Kim Wagner told 4 a.m. viewers about the station’s ongoing problems.

No other stations reported tech issues overnight.

U.S. stock markets continued trading as normal Friday despite the widespread outages. Major indexes were down at the week’s close, but analysts said the weakness was unrelated to the IT outage.

Las Vegas resident Steve Loehner said he woke up at 3 a.m. Friday for day-trading on his Charles Schwabb account, which was disrupted. He was surprised the New York Stock Exchange kept running — the London Stock Exchange had some service disruptions, but it did not affect trading. Services were restored by midmorning in Las Vegas.

“I understand the trading must go on, but this was not an ordinary situation,” Loehner said.

Other companies in the financial sector, such as Visa, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, reported service disruptions.

Some casinos also struggled with the outages. Green Valley Ranch in Henderson on Thursday night was cashing out players manually as slot machines displayed error messages, leading to long wait times.

Jesus Aguilar, 21, and his friend had been waiting around an hour to cash out their more than $70 balance.

“It’s the first machine I played,” Aguilar said. “They have to get to everybody one by one.”

A casino spokesman said disruptions were cleared as of Friday morning.

“Station Casinos was affected by the global outages,” the spokesman said in a statement. “The Company had a temporary outage late Thursday night due to a third-party vendor, lasting a few hours.”

Other Strip properties did not appear to be affected. Gaming and hotel operations at The Venetian, Treasure Island, Caesars Entertainment properties and Wynn Resorts were normal early Friday. A spokesman for MGM Resorts International the company’s hotels and gaming floors were operating normally.

While other emergency services in the U.S. reported outage issues, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said it had not been impacted. Clark County Fire Department officials said the EMS patient care tracking system was “slow” but still functional.

Similarly, at least one Safelite glass repair service in west Las Vegas and Dunkin Donuts and Lifetime Fitness in Summerlin were open and operating but dealing with system problems. Starbucks’ system also appeared affected with mobile ordering out of commission Friday morning. Customers could still order in-store.

The Associated Press and Review-Journal reporters Noble Brigham, Estelle Atkinson, John Katsilometes, Mick Akers, David Danzis, Sean Hemmersmeier and Richard Velotta contributed to this report.