Flight delays from tech outage easing at Las Vegas airport

Operations were gradually returning to normal Monday at the airport that serves Las Vegas, though Delta Air Lines — the third-busiest commercial air carrier at the airport — was still experiencing delays and cancellations systemwide.

Airport operations worldwide were disrupted Friday when a third-party vendor, Texas-based CrowdStrike, accidentally attempted to install a faulty Microsoft system upgrade, knocking 8.5 million computers offline.

The busiest carrier at Reid, Southwest, was minimally affected by the outage, but Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air, which has a high number of departures and arrivals on Fridays, shut down its website much of Friday morning and experienced numerous delays.

FlightAware, a website that tracks flight delays and cancellations, said Monday that 62 outbound flights from Reid airport, or about 8 percent of the total, were delayed and 13 flights, or about 1 percent, were canceled. Nationwide, there were 3,950 delays and 1,524 cancellations.

“Airline systems are back up and running smoothly,” a Reid spokeswoman said Monday in an email. “The airport is still busy today for a Monday but ticketing and checkpoints are flowing at a regular pace. Delta Air Lines is experiencing longer lines at this time, as they’re still rebooking flights from this weekend, and reuniting owners with their luggage.”

Delta most affected

Delta and its primary U.S. hub, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, were the most affected by the outage. Delta and United Airlines, the fifth-busiest in Las Vegas, accounted for more than 7,000 cancellations over the weekend, one of the busiest travel weekends of the summer, according to aviation expert Dave Grossman, founder and CEO of MilesTalk.

The Associated Press reported Monday that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke to Delta CEO Ed Bastian on Sunday about the airline’s high number of cancellations since Friday. Buttigieg vowed to help Delta passengers by enforcing air-travel consumer-protection rules.

While airports and airlines felt the brunt of impact of Friday’s incident, they weren’t the only ones affected.

CNN reported that banks, hospitals, hotels and car rental agencies saw their operations impacted.

In Las Vegas, some slot machines at Green Valley Ranch in Henderson displayed error messages early Friday, but the problem was resolved by midmorning. Other casinos citywide reported no problems resulting from the outage.

A representative of Valley Hospital Medical Center said Monday that operations had returned to normal, but did not respond to inquiries that emergency room patients had been diverted to nearby University Medical Center during the outage.

CNN reported that some hospitals nationwide were having difficulty with fetal monitors.

It also reported that in some hotels, guests were not able to access their rooms – something that happened to MGM guests in September when the company shut down its computer systems after a cyberattack.

The stock market went on a wild ride. After several companies saw prices dip in response to the tech outage Friday, others rallied Monday on the news that President Joe Biden is withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race.

Car rental agency Hertz saw business rise late Friday in apparent response to a rush on rentals from people who saw their airline flights canceled.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.