Global IT outage affects flights, hospitals in Ottawa

A global technology outage grounded flights and impacted services at hospitals Friday morning in Ottawa.

Transportation

Porter Airlines has cancelled 22 flights as of 4:30 p.m. It adds that it's working to return to full service as soon as possible. It asks passengers to visit Porter's website for more information and updates.

• Latest on global IT outage: Airlines, businesses hit by technology disruption

There were several flight delays and cancellations Friday morning, said the Ottawa International Airport on X, while asking passengers to check with their airlines for the most up-to-date information. Krista Kealey, director of communications and public affairs.at the Ottawa Airport told CFRA's The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll though not all Canadian airlines have been affected by the outage, some international flights were impacted. 

• Departures at Ottawa International Airport

"There are definitely a couple of people around from Porter who are waiting to find what's going on. There were a couple of lineups there, but again their staff is trying to help them," Kealey said.

The cancellations also included a United Airlines flight to Newark, which was scheduled to depart Ottawa this morning.

Air Canada has also cancelled one flight due to the outage.

"Then they just said not too long ago that it may take up to two days to rebook everybody," said Steve Patterson. "I'm taking my daughter to Vancouver on her first trip to Vancouver to meet family and whatnot, and now we're sitting in the airport waiting for some sort of an answer."

Isabelle Pilon and her aunt are trying to get to Edmonton.

"They told us that we might not even leave today. And we're only going for four days for a family reunion tomorrow," Pilon said. "So odds are that our all of our trips are going to be cancelled. And anyway, there's not much we can do."

Fatima Hilmi planned on spending the weekend in Banff for her anniversary.

"Very frustrating," she said. "And especially that if we want another ticket like let's say to go with Air Canada or WestJet, it's like $1,500. Like it's not even worth it, you know."

Hospitals

The issue with Microsoft services hit at least two Ottawa hospitals.

CHEO said in a statement Friday it continues to operate despite the CrowdStrike global outage.

"While CHEO has been affected by the CrowdStrike global outage, we are providing services as planned using workarounds where needed. We do not anticipate any impact on our services offered to children and their families today," reads the statement.

The Queensway-Carleton Hospital (QCH) says it was impacted by the CrowdStrike issue between 1:30 and 5:45 a.m., but the system has since been restored.

"During that time, we experienced an outage of our health record system. Staff moved to our established downtime procedures," QCH said in a statement on X. "There are no impacts to planned surgeries and appointments."

The Ottawa Hospital said on X that hospital operations were not impacted.

"There are no disruptions at the Ottawa Hospital to hospital operations at this time for patients," reads the post. "The hospital will continue to monitor the situation."

Banks and Businesses

Friday's outage also knocked banks offline and media outlets off the air. The outage caused a massive disruption, affecting companies and services around the world and in the capital, highlighting dependence on software from a handful of providers.

Card payments were not working this morning at Starbucks and other businesses. Some people reported delays in receiving their paycheques this Friday, as well. 

Ken Decker went to his TD Bank to try and take out money Friday morning but couldn't.

"They just told us in the line that we weren't able to withdraw cash because of the outage."

The Ottawa Redblacks said Friday afternoon that its TicketMaster systems were back up and running, but people headed to Friday night's game should be prepared, just in case.

"The TD Place + Lansdowne App is working and is available for ticket management, however, we strongly encourage you to take the extra step of downloading your tickets to your wallet for tonight’s game," the team said on X.

Lack of infrastructure to fix things bigger issue: Expert 

Technology expert Ritesh Kotak told CFRA's The Morning Rush with Bill Carroll the outages themselves aren't the only problem. He says the bigger issue is the lack of infrastructure to fix things when they break.

"One thing that we've learnt is that these outages are gonna continue to happen. They're becoming larger and more frequent, but we don't have the systems in place to deal with it when the lights get turned off," he said. "And that to me is even scarier than when a software has gone wrong."

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.

The issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and services, and escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing it.

--With files from CTV News Ottawa's Katie Griffin