Airline and bank websites go down in another major internet failure - 2nd in 10 days

[jksobonya]

What is going on out there? Maybe, just maybe, building our entire lives around digital technology isn't the greatest thing after all. Imagine if it all comes crashing down ... 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/17/tech/airlines-website-outage/index.html 

Airline and bank websites go down in another major internet failure

London (CNN Business) Airlines, banks, stock exchanges and trading platforms suffered brief website outages early Thursday after a key piece of internet infrastructure failed, sparking the second major interruption of the past 10 days.

Virgin Australia said in a statement on Thursday that it had resolved an IT outage caused by a failure at Akamai Technologies (AKAM), a global content delivery network.

"Virgin Australia was one of many organizations to experience an outage with the Akamai content delivery system today and we are working with them to ensure that necessary measures are taken to prevent these outages from reoccurring," the airline said in a statement.

The outages on Thursday ensnared companies including Southwest Airlines (LUV), United Airlines (UAL), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBAUF), Westpac Bank (WBK) and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANEWF) (ANZ). The Hong Kong Stock Exchange website was also briefly offline.

The outages come just over a week after countless websites and apps around the world went down for about an hour when Fastly (FSLY), another major content delivery network, suffered a widespread failure.

Content delivery systems improve load times for websites and provides other services to internet sites, apps and platforms. The services accomplish that by storing content and aspects of websites and apps on servers that are physically closer to users.

In a statement to CNN Business, Southwest Airlines said it worked quickly to restore the systems following the outage. The pause in connectivity did not impact the airline's flight operations, it said in a statement.

United Airlines told one Twitter user, "We are experiencing technical issues and working promptly to fix them. We will update you once this matter is resolved."

A spokesperson for Los Angeles International Airport told CNN Business that they experienced momentary disruptions, but there were no significant delays or cancellations. The airport did not immediately respond to a request for comment about which websites or systems were disrupted.

Australia's Westpac bank apologized to customers. "Affected Westpac systems are now back up and running following an issue today with a third party provider which impacted some of our services including internet banking," it said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Commonwealth Bank of Australia said "we are seeing services return following a tech outage which had widespread impacts across businesses." ANZ said the outage affected its app and internet banking platform, but services had been restored.

The websites of Vanguard, Automatic Data Processing, Frontier Airlines and E-trade were also briefly offline, according to Downdetector, which monitors website outages.

Major website and app outages happen from time to time and typically don't last long — internet service providers, content delivery networks and other hosting services are built with multiple redundancies and a global network of backup servers designed to reduce disruptions when things go haywire.

— Angus Watson and Michelle Toh contributed reporting.

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--Jessica

[parpitt1]

Pretty sure I got lucky on Monday and did not get grounded or delayed

[david0]

As someone who was stuck on the tarmac in Denver for 3 hours on the evening of June 14th after landing, I can say that it was a very bad experience. Upon landing all of the outbound planes were parked at the gates. When Southwest finally decided to use stairs to deplane the passengers it took them a good 20 minutes to figure out how to operate the stair truck properly, making several attempts to raise, lower, reposition, and repeat. Then our checked bags were not available for pickup until the next day (Tuesday). When I mentioned to the baggage desk that this had been a huge inconvenience, the employee replied, "Yeah, it's been inconvenient for the whole system." Service without a smile.

[bec102896]

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@david0 wrote:

As someone who was stuck on the tarmac in Denver for 3 hours on the evening of June 14th after landing, I can say that it was a very bad experience. Upon landing all of the outbound planes were parked at the gates. When Southwest finally decided to use stairs to deplane the passengers it took them a good 20 minutes to figure out how to operate the stair truck properly, making several attempts to raise, lower, reposition, and repeat. Then our checked bags were not available for pickup until the next day (Tuesday). When I mentioned to the baggage desk that this had been a huge inconvenience, the employee replied, "Yeah, it's been inconvenient for the whole system." Service without a smile.

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Sorry your flight was affected by the system issues. You could always Contact Customer Relations and maybe they can offer you a voucher for the long delay. 

-Blake

[david0]

uh huh, did that before this s*post.

[bwallet]

@david0 Yeah. That would piss me off. If they aren't able to operate flights, and the gates are all full, you push back a plane and park it to let passengers get off.

Did they deliver your bags to you, or did you have to go back to the airport?

[david0]

No, I had to return to the airport myself to get the bags. They said, and I'm paraphrasing, that given the magnitude of the failure on June 14 (nationwide Southwest groundstop) that there would be no bag delivery offered. I'm amazed that they've yet to respond or apologize to all customers affected--not very assuring how the nation's largest domestic carrier is operating in 2021.

[NicoleAshley]

@david0 We're sincerely sorry our handling of the technology outage has you questioning our commitment to outstanding Customer Service. As a Customer-to-Customer forum, we are not equipped to assist you here, but we encourage you to Contact Customer Relations if you have not received any follow-up regarding your specific experience. Thank you.

[david0]

@NicoleAshley Thanks, I have not received any followup and have shared my experience with Customer Relations. I'll be sure to update this thread with my experience should that change. I don't think I asked for assistance here, but thanks for your reply at any rate.

[aMomTo6]

@david0 I was caught in that mess on the 15th and have similarly been surprised that SWA hasn't reached out in some way. I get that it was beyond their control. I did encounter great employees along the way though who were really doing their best to serve passengers the best they could. I boarded a plan in San Jose where the gate attendant had to manually write down - with pen and paper! - names of people boarding and destination cities.  It was insane. Ended up being a ridiculously LONG day with delays and I missed a bunch of stuff at my destination. Super inconvenient but not nearly as bad as many nightmare tales I was hearing from other passengers on other flights.  I am beyond surprised that there has been no statement from Southwest to passengers affected.

Three weeks ago my daughter (who was also on this ill fated trip with me on the 15th) was on a flight out of Denver that had been delayed an hour and half, then hit a bird in takeoff, had to be redirected back to Denver, boarded another plane and eventually got home nearly 4 hours later than anticipated (2 am!). She received an email the next day with an apology and promise of a LUV voucher.  

SO, this is really weird to be so many days beyond the tragic outage on the 14th/15th and still hear nothing. 

Didn't mean to hijack the thread here just wanted to say to David0 "I hear ya!"