COLUMBUS, Ohio — A global IT outage grounded flights nationwide Friday, including major airlines like United, American and Delta.
"Every person that I've talked to that's had to deal with flying today has been having a tough time,” said traveler Anthony Cihan.
Cancellations kept many grounded in Columbus longer than they anticipated. After a conference this week, Cihan said his 5 p.m. flight to get home to Alabama was canceled.
"Spent about the last three hours trying to find another flight to Atlanta, so then I can get there, and once I'm there try to find another flight to Alabama,” Cihan said.
As a cybersecurity specialist, Cihan said he knows all too well about the outage impacting his day.
"Unfortunately, a lot of these defensive security tools, they work very intimately with the way that the computer operating systems work, and bad updates that get pushed out can cause things to fail. They can cause breakages in different software,” Cihan said.
For other travelers like Ronell Roper, the struggle came in the continued delays preventing him from getting home.
"They bumped me from 12 o'clock to 2 o'clock, then from 2 o'clock to 6 o'clock right now, and then, 15 minutes ago I found out that now I'm bumped until tomorrow,” Roper said.
Roper said it's all about keeping his cool.
"I try to stay out of this environment because if you stay in this environment, you're definitely gonna stress,” Roper said.
Roper added he’s not sweating the small stuff and embracing one last night in Columbus before returning to Atlanta.
"Get a rental car, get some Uber Eats at the hotel room, I'm fine,” Roper said.
But for some who may not be traveling for business, getting hotels, rental cars and additional flights isn’t always financially feasible.
"Not everybody's well off, especially with the way the economy's been recently. It's not like everybody has an extra $400-$500 to throw around,” Cihan said.
With more than 11,000 flights across the U.S. being delayed because of the outage, it will likely take some time for air travel to get back on track.
The John Glenn Columbus International Airport encourages passengers to check with their airline for the most accurate information if they're flying out this weekend.
"We are also reminding passengers that lines at ticketing and at TSA security checkpoints may be longer than normal so they should allow plenty of time. We stand ready to work with our partners to ensure customers have the best possible experience at the airport," a statement from the airport read.