I only saw one Blue Screen of Death on Sunday , July 21 , across 15 hour of change of location via two of the country ’s biggest drome , just two days after a ball up computer software update crippled millions of corporate computers running the Windows operating arrangement .

“ Maybe thing are OK , ” I think thinking as my family took the first stride into New York ’s LaGuardia Airport around 9 a.m. Headlines to the contrary on daylight 3 of theGreat Windows Outage of 2024 , the ticketing and luggage area did n’t take care too bad .

I should have get laid better . I ’d take literally two steps inside the building before getting the first of about 3,000 delay electronic mail from Delta over the course of the 24-hour interval , to go along with even more notifications from the Flighty and Fly Delta apps . This was n’t going to be an well-to-do running home from New York to Florida , something I ’ve done dozens of time over the eld .

I ’m no alien to flight postponement . ( I drop 15 hours in the Sky Club at LAXin late January — not something I advocate , despite how in force it is . ) But this one was different . Weather happens . mechanically skillful progeny pass . They suck , but those all come down to safety . This time ? A third - company security marketer botched a filing cabinet in spite of appearance of Windows . CrowdStrikeshould have caught it . Microsoft should have caught it . Neither did until it was too late . While the fix was relatively wide-eyed — boot into Safe Mode , or keep re-start the machine until the bad Indian file was supersede — the first - rescript effects were immense .

It ’s the second- and third - order effects where thing really last wrong for the airlines . Delta was gain particularly hard — chief executive officer Ed Bastian on Sundaywrotethat more than 3,500 flights were canceled through Saturday , and many more on Sunday . “ Please come see me at the podium if you need a hug , ” our gate factor said around 4:30 p.m. on Sunday as the board freshen up to show CANCELED .

The channel for the rebooking desk in the A concourse at Atlanta — one of seven terminals in the country ’s officious aerodrome — was comically ( or tragically ) long . I sit with one earbud in , on hold with the airline reservation ’s line for two hours before pass on up . ( My brother , who has much higher frequent flier status , at least supervise to get a real someone to tell him that there was no way I was getting out before midnight , and that the best affair to do was to stick to the assign flight of steps for now . )

Finally onboard in the early hours of Monday , July 22 , a flight attendant gave us an mind of what was really throwing a twist into things : Delta did n’t know where its crews were . That was confirmed by and by in the dayin another news post from Delta , which said that more than half of its IT arrangement run Windows , and that extra sync time was want even after the affected machines were bring up .

“ Delta ’s crews are fully staff and quick to serve up our customer , ” the post continued . “ But one of Delta ’s most critical system — which check all flights have a full work party in the right position at the right time — is deeply complex and is call for the most time and manual support to synchronize . ”

We ultimately made it home at nearly 2 a.m. threadbare . A little frazzled . But only about eight hour late , all told . We were fortunate . My brother spent some 30 hours in the Atlanta airport two days earlier , just trying to get home to Pensacola after aborting a trip to the West Coast . No flights . No one - elbow room car rentals . lay aside for hold off , no other actual options beyond someone driving five time of day each way for a delivery .

Our story were just two of thousands — and ours were relatively low - wager . We did n’t have any kids traveling on their own . We were n’t out a ton of money , beyond a twosome of repast we did n’t plan on having in an airport . Our bags made it on the same planer .

The immediate fix for the CrowdStrike bankruptcy was pretty simple . CrowdStrike and Microsoft require to have policies in stead to mitigate the possibility of this pass off again . ( It will , of path , occur again . ) But as the saying goes — and this is the PG-13 variant — poop run downhill . None of this was the airlines ’ break . But it quickly became their mess to clean up .

And that ’s something a simple reboot ca n’t fix . Even if you do itmore than 8 million times .