The Rerouted Skytress

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.