Baggage Piles Up At O’Hare Because Of Global Internet Outage

Travel is already a nightmare but this morning in particular is messy.

A global internet outage this morning was found out to be caused by Crowdstrike. Still, some places and operations are without internet.

It's created a mess in many places, not the least of which is Chicago O'Hare, one of the world's busiest airports. As of late this morning, 1,500 flights have been canceled and 4,000 delayed, numbers that are both expected to grow as the day goes on.

This was kind of an odd nugget in the mess at O'Hare. NBC Chicago reports that baggage from United Airlines travelers has been stacking up at Terminal 2. Staffers were seen moving all of the luggage there. Screens were even put up to block view of the growing pile. What made it even more weird is that no one from United told the outlet why they were moving the luggage.

United, Delta, and American Airlines all saw flights halted and delayed because of the outage. For United, the Chicago-based airline said that the huge outage was "impacting computer systems worldwide."

At O'Hare, flights at least got off the ground again around 5:30 this morning but there are still a lot of delays.

If there's good news in the entire situation, the "unprecedented" outage wasn't caused by a cyberattack. It was thanks to a snafu that was sent out in a software update. Meanwhile, internet issues are causing some states to send nonessential workers home early and even some hospitals are closing nonurgent care today.