I am writing this blog post sitting in the middle seat on the Airbus 321. My crew and I are deadheading back to Atlanta from Salt Lake City. Last night we deadheaded to Salt Lake City and had a short layover. It isn’t common to deadhead in to a city and then deadhead back out. But, this week has been any thing but common at my airline. We have been the unfortunate victims of CrowdStrike’s cyber glitch. Now, I have seen and been part of numerous non-routine days at my airline. But, this glitch has been the glitchiest glitch of them all.

When I got home in the wee hours on July 19th, I had no idea I had avoided a major computer meltdown. My sister had made a comment on my Instagram post that I was lucky I had arrived home at 2:30 am. I quickly did a Google search and discovered that many airlines had been the victims of the CrowdStrike computer outage. My airline posted that they were taking a pause to reset our Microsoft system. Flights were delayed in the process. Unfortunately, this disruption in flights quickly snowballed. Our computer system, especially the system that keeps track of crews and their rotations, had to be manually restarted. Our crew system has many complicated layers to it. Each layer had to be manually reset. This caused a major bugaboo for everyone. Scheduling had to figure out where crews were and how to get them to the next destination. We have over 4000 daily flights. Our crew scheduling is a mighty department. But, with this number of flights and crew to track manually, things got back to normal at a snail’s pace.

Our airline immediately put out the call for crews to pick up trips. They were offering incentive pay to sweeten the pot. However, due to the disruption in crew tracking, Skytresses and Skyters had to have a day off following any trips they picked up. Scheduling knew the likelihood of getting crews back on time to fly their regular rotations was very slim. Thus, trips remained in the system that needed to be covered.

Another harsh reality was that crews were timing out on their duty limitations. Crew accommodations was trying to get hotels for the crews that needed them. Crew tracking was trying to find available Skytresses, Skyters and pilots to replace these crew members who were now illegal to fly. All this was happening while our IT personnel was feverishly trying manually to reboot our 37,000 computer systems. Since our airline had to pause its flights, Skytresses, Skyters and pilots that commute to their bases weren’t able to make it to base to report for their trips on time. Our airline continued to send out SOS calls for employees to pick up trips out of any base they could. They also doubled the incentive pay to entice even more people to pick up trips.

I started tracking the flights between St. Louis and Atlanta. Most of my flights were either canceled or delayed at least four hours. If I lived in Atlanta I might have picked up a trip to help the operation. However, lack of flights and lack of faith kept me at home. Yessiree. I had previously experienced a computer meltdown several years prior. It’s now a great Skytress war story that has left me with ACS-PTSD… Airline Computer System -Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. At the time it was chaos at its best. Fortunately, I had a great crew. We laughed through it all. It also helped that one of my Skytresses had been a former gate agent. She was able to help our agents check-in passenger through the computer system. Our agents had to resort back to our old computer system to get flights boarded. Fortunately, Skytress Jamie was familiar with this older computer system. Skytress Jamie even helped get our crew checked-in for our deadhead flight to Raleigh Durham. We were supposed to fly to Raleigh Durham and work a flight back the next morning. Instead, we deadheaded back out of Raleigh the next morning back to Atlanta. Sounds familiar, eh? That time…Deadhead to Raleigh to deadhead out of Raleigh. This time…Deadhead to Salt Lake City to deadhead out of Salt Lake City. That particular trip we eventually worked a flight to Washington D.C.’s Dulles airport. We then went to the airport hotel. Our schedules were updated every few minutes. It actually became humorous how quickly we were rerouted and then rerouted again minutes later. Ron wasn’t flying when the computers went down. However, I know he had ACS-PTSD just from me constantly updating him on our whereabouts and what was happening at the airports. Ron was on standby during this computer glitch. Not on standby to fly. No siree. He was on standby to rescue me from the airport if need be. Fortunately, it only took our airline a day and a half to recover from this computer glitch. Sadly, the same couldn’t be said about the CrowdStrike glitch.

The effects of the CrowdStrike glitch were being felt well into the weekend. Our airline granted positive space seats for Skytresses, Skyters and pilots to fly to base and then eventually fly home. Our airline needed crews to get to base to cover trips. They needed crews to be able to get home and get legal rest. I immediately booked my positive space seat for work. I had to fly on Tuesday. I knew I would need a backup flight to make sure I made it to Atlanta on time to fly my trip. I was grateful I had my positive space flight, too. My earlier flight to Atlanta was delayed due to pilot rest requirements. Thankfully, my positive space flight was on time. This was positively wonderful for me…. and my airline since I made it to work on time.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to encounter when I got to the crew lounge. When I walked out of the elevator I saw a crew lounge filled with Skytresses and Skyters. I had never seen the likes of this before. Bodies were everywhere. Apparently I missed the brunt of the displaced crews. Another Skytress told me the day before there were so many Skytresses and Skyters in the crew lounge most people had to either sit on the floor or stand because all the seats were occupied. When I sat down at the computer I heard story after story from crews that were either rerouted or were delayed. I could tell after 5 days things were still a mess. I saw my trip was showing on time. Foolishly, I thought maybe I would go unscathed with reroutes. After all, it was a simple trip. Heck. We had a complete crew, airplane, and passengers. Well, at least for a short time. Our original pilots got rerouted minutes before I left the crew lounge. Then our airplane was sent somewhere else.

Our deadhead to Salt Lake City was actually a scheduled deadhead. We were to lay over in Salt Lake City and then fly to Burbank the next morning. Our flight to Salt Lake City was delayed due to storms in Atlanta. Unfortunately, we had a short layover in Salt Lake City. Somewhere on our way to Salt Lake City we received a new reroute. We were no longer going to Burbank. The flight would have to be delayed too long for us to get our minimum crew rest. Thus, we were rescheduled to deadhead back to Atlanta and pick up our rotation there. We weren’t the only crews deadheading into and out of Salt Lake City. We had close to 30 Skytresses, Skyters and pilots deadheading on each flight. The computer glitch was working in my favor. I spent 2 days sitting on an airplane writing my blog posts and watching YouTube videos. I was perfectly content.

The second day of our trip I could definitely tell our airline had a better control on things. Flights were leaving on time and crews were flying their scheduled rotations. Alleluia! Things were getting back to normal. More importantly, it looked like I would arrive back to St. Louis on time at the end of my three-day trip. And we all know,…that truly is the most important part of any flight rotation. Well, at least in my Skytress mind it is.

The government has stated they are looking into our recovery process from the CrowdStrike computer debacle. I know our airline is, too. Our airline relies on CrowdStrike and Microsoft more than any other airline. Our airline wants CrowdStrike to compensate us for lost revenue. The computer glitch affected more than 1.3 million of our airline customers. CrowdStrike is blaming our airline for the slow recovery. They claim our airline refused help from them. We have learned CrowdStrike’s help was just a reference to a public website where instructions were posted on how to manually reboot each computer. Egads! I know our airline will definitely learn from what went right to what went wrong in our recovery process. Five days to recover from a computer glitch is unfathomable. Sadly, I feel this may not be the last time we experience a computer meltdown. Between hackers and computer updates that come with unforeseen glitches, we are extremely susceptible as an airline industry. I’m positive my ACS-PTSD from computer glitches will see more ACS-PTSD before my flying days are over. Hopefully, the odds will be in my favor though. I don’t know how many more computer meltdowns my aging Skytress heart can take.

On July 16th I hopped in my car at 440am to head to the St. Louis airport. It was thundering as I got in my car. Egads. This was not a good sign. I immediately wondered if I would…or could… beat the rain to the airport. I turned on the car radio to give me some inspirational beat the rain to the airport music. In retrospect, I should have been singing, “Rain, rain, go away. Come back another day”. Sadly, I didn’t beat the rain. Instead, I stepped out of my car as a torrential downpour fell from the sky. The kind employee shuttle driver waited for me to make the mad dash from my car to his shuttle. I was in the rain less than a minute. But when I walked into the airport restroom after I got off the employee shuttle, I looked like I had taken a shower in my uniform. This definitely wasn’t how I wanted to start my first day back flying after being off four months. Unfortunately, rain would be my nemesis for the next three days.

My three-day trip looked harmless on paper. Yessiree. I told myself it would be the perfect trip to ease myself back into flying. After a Fort Myers turn we would fly to Daytona Beach for a nice layover. Our flight back to Atlanta was scheduled for 3pm the next day. My crew and I had the same excellent plan for our Daytona layover. We all planned to sleep in! Mother Nature had other plans. Eh! Doesn’t she always have other plans? Our first flight to Fort Myers was delayed because of rain. Thank you Mother Nature. Despite this, my crew and I had ambitious plans to turn the flight around as quickly as possible when we got to Fort Myers. Not surprisingly, the agents in Fort Myers were even more ambitious. They had been dealing with flight delays all day because of the weather. Or should I say, because of Mother Nature?

Mother Nature threw us a nasty curve ball on our takeoff from Fort Myers. I was sitting on the front jumpseat with my Skytress In-Charge. We were enthusiastically solving the world’s problems. I mean, we were enthusiastically doing our mental review for takeoff as required by our airline. Wink. Wink. We were on a rapid rollout when the pilots quickly brought the aircraft to a stop. I immediately knew we aborted our takeoff due to wind sheer. Although, it rarely happens, one never forgets that feeling. My very junior Skytress In-Charge had never had an aborted takeoff due to wind sheer. She wasn’t sure what had happened. I explained about the wind sheer. I explained the brakes get so hot from aborting a takeoff that we most likely would need to wait for the brakes to cool off before we could take off again for Atlanta. I should have followed this explanation with a round of, “Rain, rain, go away. Come back another day”. Yessiree. We couldn’t go back to the gate because Mother Nature whipped up some horrendous lightning to go along with the heavy rain. The ramp closed for the safety of the ramp agents. Of course, we eventually went back to the gate when the lightening cleared. Not because the brakes needing more time to cool down. No siree. We had passengers that wanted to get off the airplane. They were going to miss their connections in Atlanta. These passengers decided they would rather sleep in their own beds than sleep in a hotel bed in Atlanta. Unfortunately for us, scheduling rerouted us to sleep in a bed in Atlanta instead of bed in Daytona Beach. Scheduling deemed we wouldn’t make it back to Atlanta in time to fly to Daytona. Scheduling also decided the next day we would get up early and go to Washington D.C. and back before we resumed our original rotation. I swear Mother Nature and Crew Scheduling were in cahoots with each other. So, after 22 hours of sporting bad rain weather hair, I finally put my head down on my hotel pillow in Atlanta for my minimum crew rest.

I felt I dealt admirably with our short domicile layover. Heck. We were still going to Jackson Hole. A short Jackson Hole layover beats a no Jackson Hole layover any day. As soon as the gate agent in Jackson Hole opened the aircraft door, my soul was resuscitated by the cool gentle breeze and the glorious view of the Grand Tetons. I’m not sure who got the approval to put the Jackson Hole airport smack dab in the middle of the Grand Teton National Park. But, kudos to them. Unfortunately, they did fail miserably for not getting a special dispensation for lavatory trucks to be able to dump the lavs while on national park land. Talk about a stinky situation in the morning. Oh, well. I’ll take stinky lavatories in exchange for the Grand Teton mountain views any day of the week.

Instead of gawking at the Grand Tetons on the way back to the airport the next morning, I should have been saying, “Rain, rain. Go away. Come back another day”. Yessiree. The combination of go home day and rain is never a winning combination. Of course, we made it back to Atlanta from Jackson Hole without any issues. Of course, we had a long sit in Atlanta without any issues. Of course, when it was time to go to Milwaukee on our last turn….we had issues. Rain issues. Our plane to Milwaukee was delayed coming in from Chicago because of weather. This delay proved to be perfect timing for the thunderstorms to build up around the Atlanta airport. Obviously, Mother Nature didn’t want the rain to come back another day. No siree. She insisted it come immediately after we boarded the airplane for Milwaukee and pushed back from the gate. She also insured our APU…the auxiliary power unit….that cools the aircraft… was not functioning properly. Darn you Mother Nature!

I should have sang, “Rain. Rain. Go away.Come back another day” all the way to Milwaukee. Only I was too busy checking and rechecking my last commuter flight home. I swear I could hear Mother Nature laughing at her handy work while I feverishly refreshed the flight app. Eventually, I came to the realization that after a short layover in Jackson Hole, where I only got two hours of sleep, I would have to spend the night in the lounge and catch the first flight home in the morning. In my state of dejection, I somehow remembered my Skytress trump card. Yessiree. The Rerouted Skytress trump card I needed to beat Mother Nature at her own game. I had a kind conversation with God. I told him I readily accepted the fact I was going to have to stay in the crew lounge. But, I would also greatly appreciate it if he would delay my flight home to St. Louis. You bet I asked my angels in Reroute Heaven to work their magic to delay my flight home, too. You know the saying, “ask and you shall receive?” Well, it doesn’t always work when it comes to winning the Power Ball lottery. But, it sure works enough times for me when it comes to delaying my flight home. This night was no exception. Yes. I did have to power walk to my gate. But, I made it to the gate in time for the boarding process.

I’d like to say that was my happy ending to my first trip back after four months off. But, a wee bit of drama ensued before we took off for St. louis. We had an aborted takeoff. Yes. I know I said it rarely happens. But, I haven’t written a flying blog post in a while. So apparently God wanted to make sure I had ample material. Our aircraft was on our takeoff rollout when, as the Captain said, “We had a runway conflict with another aircraft and had to abort our takeoff”. Simply put, another aircraft crossed our runway when they shouldn’t have. Fortunately, we weren’t at maximum speed. Fortunately, our brakes didn’t need extra time to cool off. After a short delay I was heading home to St. Louis. I was up 24 hours when I eventually got home. I considered myself very lucky. If I hadn’t made my flight home I would have been caught up in the CrowdStrike computer glitch that paralyzed our airline. That glitch happened on Friday. Our airline was still reeling from the effects on Tuesday when I went back to work. Forget, “Rain. Rain. Go away”. My rally cry for that trip should have been, “Come back another day”. Egads!