When AT&T went down Thursday, people couldn't make phone calls, not even to 911.
Amid the phone service outage, a person named Leo took to TikTok to show the effect the outage had on people at the airport. “Great day to be at the airport with an AT&T national outage,” read the text on the screen as Leo appeared sarcastically giving a thumbs up.
“Many people can't get their tickets on their phones, the airport Wi-Fi is slow and congested, and the lines to buy tickets are chaotic. I can only imagine how many people will be late for their flights! he captioned the video of her.
This disruption extended far beyond typical communication services, such as making calls and sending text messages, for travelers. The biggest problem for them seems to be the inability to access their boarding passes. Leo's brief narrative sets the stage for a broader discussion about our dependence on digital connectivity, especially at crucial moments like navigating airports. Viewers argued that this is exactly why they capture or print their boarding passes, as the technology can be unreliable.
After her TikTok was viewed more than 700,000 times, many people took to the comments to give suggestions on what should have been done to avoid the chaos.
“Just use the airport Wi-Fi,” one commenter said, as AT&T had recommended that affected users access the Wi-Fi and use it to call people.
Leo responded to the comment in a video clarifying that everyone was trying to connect to the airport WiFi, but there was little success with so many people trying to connect at once.
Another commenter joked: “Hahaha. I bet someone's dad at the airport says, 'THIS is why I print my tickets.'”
“It's a good time to remind people to download boarding passes into their wallet,” one commenter noted.
“Don't you take screenshots of your entries?” another commenter questioned.
Many people also ended up taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, to compare the situation to the Netflix movie. Leave the world behind, which launched a few months ago with a tagline that sounded a little familiar. The motto says: “Without internet. No phones. Not going back to normal.”
“Netflix movie predictive programming Leave the world behind. 'Without Internet. No phones. Not going back to normal,'” one cheep read.
“Me, after seeing the world left behind and then seeing that SOS is only a trend,” another cheep read.
The outage in the United States' largest telephone network prompted warnings from emergency services and advice from companies to fix the problem.
The problems began early Thursday morning. AT&T said it was aware of the issue and was urgently working to fix it, but gave no indication why it had happened or when it might be resolved.
AT&T has about 250 million customers, making it by far the largest telephone network in the United States.
As of Thursday afternoon, the mobile network company said 75 percent of its network had been restored.
“Our network teams took immediate action and three-quarters of our network has been restored so far,” the company said. “We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers.”
