Disruptions from a global technology outage Friday left 20 students from a Harvey-based group stranded after United Airlines and other carriers were forced to cancel flights.
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The high school and college students were on a global leadership trip hosted each year by the nonprofit Gloria J. Taylor Foundation. The students embarked to San Juan July 15, and were supposed to arrive home Friday after spending the week learning about Caribbean culture.
Three days after the outage, 14 group members, including supervisors and students, are still in Puerto Rico with flights scheduled throughout the day Tuesday.
South suburban students return home after flight cancellations left them stranded in Puerto Rico
Cliff Taylor, co-founder of the foundation who supervised the trip, said they spent the weekend trying to secure flights, but faced repeated cancellations from United and other airlines.
Recent high school graduate Kamari Garrett said the last few days were difficult while the group scrambled to find last-minute lodging and plan meals for their time stuck in Puerto Rico.
“It kind of was a big change, like we went from being in five-star hotels and fancy restaurants, making our own food, having a personal chef, to, like, walking into churches because we’re stranded on the island, we’re all lost, only one of us speaks Spanish,” Garrett said.
Flight disruptions were caused by a faulty software update from cyber security firm CrowdStrike affecting computers using Microsoft Windows.
While CrowdStrike issued a fix early Friday afternoon that resolved problems for a number of affected companies, airlines including Delta, United and American all issued ground stops citing communications issues caused by the outage.
Taylor said the group had to frantically find lodging after learning their flights were canceled.
“Everyone was scrambling because we had just checked out of our hotel rooms, and so we were literally getting on the bus when we started getting the notifications that there was a cancellation due to this global outage,” Taylor said.
United rebooked the mass group several times throughout the weekend, only to have all of the possible flights canceled last minute.
After rebooking once again, some group members were able to return home Sunday, but the other half remained stranded after the airline canceled the group’s earlier flight scheduled that day.
Garrett was among the group members who returned Sunday, but leaving her friends behind was difficult, she said.
“Those are my friends, those are my family and like, I have to leave them back, and I felt so bad because I’m like, well, why do I get to go home if they don’t and they have other things to do,” she said.
Theresa Dixon, co-founder and executive director for the foundation who returned home with part of the group late Sunday evening, has been working to arrange the swift return of the remaining members.
“I’ve been on the phone all last night and this morning trying to see if I can get them home today, the quickest they can get us home is Tuesday at night,” she said. “So I had to book another airline to get my kids home at a decent time tomorrow.”
Dixon said she booked flights with Southwest Airlines to get the remainder of the group home after United’s prices reached more than $2,000 for a one-way ticket and available flights could not accommodate the group’s size, even after dividing members up.
“They couldn’t accommodate us, because everybody’s getting flights, so every time we try, they said they don’t have enough flights or they don’t have enough seats,” Dixon said. “I couldn’t let the kids fly alone.”
Dixon said the foundation has spent thousands on lodging, food and transportation to ensure the group’s safety and comfort during this unexpected crisis.
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“I had to pay additional money to get the kids home, pay additional for the hotel, additional for food and everything,” Dixon said.
United Airlines issued a statement saying they were unable to get some of the group back on Sunday, but noting they had purchased tickets on other airlines.
“We will continue to work with the customers directly to provide refunds of the unused tickets and compensation for their extended stay,” it read.
Dixon said the group tried to make the most of their extra time in San Juan, but some students missed work and were eager to return to their families.
Dixon said she leaves for another trip with students from the foundation Wednesday, but this time to the Kalahari resort in Wisconsin, where the group will travel by bus.
Each year the foundation takes a group of top academic performing students from south suburban areas including Calumet City, Crete, Matteson, Richton Park and Olympia Fields on a global leadership trip to learn about branding and marketing strategies. This was the foundation’s second year going to Puerto Rico.
“It’s a great opportunity. The symposium itself was great, the island was great,” she said. “Just getting home was the challenge.”