Dozens of frustrated, tired and angry travelers waited in line at the Spirit Airlines ticket counter at LAX early Friday morning desperately seeking help, underscoring the widespread disruption caused by a technological glitch that upended air travel around the world.
“They're not going to do much,” an airline worker warned prospective passengers shortly before 8 a.m. He asked if anyone's flight had been cancelled on Thursday and advised that “the best option is to request a refund online.”
Among those who spoke to the worker for guidance was Eli Osei, 20. He had a flight scheduled for 11:49 p.m. on Thursday. The flight was first delayed until 12:10 a.m. and then until 12:57 a.m.
“Then the communication was cut off and then cancelled,” Osei said, standing with two suitcases stacked on his luggage cart.
Osei said he stacked the two suitcases together and tried to sleep on them, but was only able to sleep for about 40 minutes before an announcement from an airline employee woke him up. There was nothing that could be done.
“Which makes a lot of sense,” Osei said, noting that it was a software problem. “It seems like no one has answers. No one can be blamed.”
There may not have been any blame at the airport, but there were already plenty of accusations.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the issue believed to have caused the outage was not a security incident or a cyberattack. The company said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update on computers running Microsoft Windows.
Osei had been in Los Angeles doing an internship and was unable to return to the Airbnb where he was staying. A new guest had already taken his place.
“I don’t really know what I’m going to do,” he said. “I figure I might stay here for a while.”
Elissa Moore, 29, and her family had been visiting Los Angeles for a week before heading to the airport Thursday night to catch a flight to Nashville, near where they live. The group of six people, including two children, arrived at LAX around 7:30 p.m. for a Spirit flight at 10:08 p.m. They were told they would be boarded manually, and a few people got on the plane. Then, she said, those passengers were deplaned and the flight was canceled.
Moore said they were told to go to the ticket counter for more information, but when they got to the departure counter, they were told Spirit employees had no information.
The family went to retrieve their checked bag, but were unable to do so because the computer system was down.
“We can’t even check our bags to get a hotel room so we can leave,” she said.
The family slept on the floor overnight, along with everyone else whose flights had been canceled. Some people were waiting in line to speak with agents and slept instead, Moore said.
Some slept on a conveyor belt until an airport employee arrived around 3 or 4 a.m. yelling at everyone to get up, he said.
“It was terrible. It is terrible,” he corrected himself. “Because we are still going through it.”
Moore, who sat barefoot and cross-legged Friday morning near a growing line for Spirit's departure counter, said everyone had been pushed in and “there was no food.” She said she was worried about her 2-year-old and 10-month-old daughters, who were asleep in a stroller in their pink pajamas.
“What am I going to feed my babies for breakfast?” she said. “My plan was to be at home, in my bed… my biggest concern is to feed them.”
She has formula for her baby, she said, but she has it for the allotted time of getting home today, not two days later. They went downstairs and she said there is a store downstairs and they can't go through security to access the food spots, because they don't have a ticket at the moment.
“It’s a disaster,” he said. “Just seeing people keep coming and they don’t care about the people who have been here all night. Not one bit of concern. They’re trying to get people to stay in the hotel so they can keep that money.”
Her best friend works at a bank, so Moore said she knows this goes beyond the impact on the airline.
“Airlines should be equipped for this,” he said. “Why don’t we have travel cots for people? Why don’t we have baby formula? And what about baby food? I understand it’s a business, but if things like this are going to happen, you need to be equipped for it.”
“They say if you missed your flight (that’s what they call it instead of saying your flight was cancelled) there’s nothing we can do for you and to call the 1-800 number,” Moore said. “And then the 1-800 number tells us they have no information, that their system is down.
“We are literally sitting here. Our flight was cancelled, we can’t rebook it, we can’t even talk to them about a refund. They said that because their system is down, they can’t talk about a refund, but ‘make sure you call within 24 hours to get your refund.’”
Gabrielle Watson, a Los Angeles-based DJ and music producer, arrived at LAX on Thursday night to catch her United Airlines flight to Chicago at 11:59 p.m. with a connection in Columbus, Ohio, so she could play a daytime set Friday at the Secret Dreams Festival. The artist knew there was trouble immediately when she got to her gate. Still, her flight boarded and she remained on the plane for hours as delays plagued the airport. The captain said there were technical issues.
After about three hours on board, Watson finally disembarked and returned home, realizing that he would not be able to catch his connecting flight in Chicago. His flight was cancelled about five hours after the scheduled departure time.
When he returned to the airport, the scene was disastrous.
“It was chaos. There were a lot of upset people,” she said. “They were spread out across all the floors, trying to be comfortable while waiting for information. It was very stressful and a bit dark.”
Now Watson is worried about losing the pay she was supposed to receive for her work.
“I’m pretty bummed,” she said. “I don’t usually play daytime sets and I had a really fun set planned. I’m really sad to miss it.”
Naval officer Jade Noble, 27, flew into LAX from San Diego on Friday morning to make a connection to Honolulu before being deployed to Guam. But her connection to Hawaii was canceled and won't be rescheduled for five to seven days, she was told, delaying the start of her first deployment.
“I don't know what the billing process will be like a week or two later,” she said of the possibility of missing her order start date. A friend will drive to Los Angeles to take her back to San Diego while she waits for a new flight.
The only silver lining, he said, is being able to spend more time with loved ones.
Syeda S., 35, arrived at LAX airport at 7 p.m. Thursday night to catch an overnight flight to Washington, D.C., with her two young children. She had packed enough to keep them fed and comfortable for an overnight flight, not a nearly 15-hour stay at the airport.
At 2 a.m., she said her children and others waiting for flights at the terminal were cranky and hungry. An airport employee handed out boxes of food to those waiting, as the stands were closed.
On Friday morning, her three-year-old daughter had a fever and her two-year-old son was fussing while his sister slept in their mother's arms. Syeda said she was frustrated that the airport wasn't more prepared for this kind of possibility.
“We don’t know what’s going on,” he said.
