A Dunedin mum is calling on Air New Zealand to “help get us home” after she and her two school-aged kids found themselves stuck in a chaotic US airport surrounded by “blue screens of death” and fellow stranded travellers amid the global IT outage.
CrowdStrike IT outage: Kiwi mum pleads for Air New Zealand’s help after US flight delays strand family
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The trio were to fly from North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham to San Francisco, via Denver, with United Airlines, after which they would board an Air New Zealand flight to Auckland, and then onto Dunedin.
But, nervous that outage-sparked flight delays would prevent them from reaching San Francisco, Jones tried contacting Air New Zealand via its app - “which is officially useless” and kept crashing - and by phone, spending two hours on hold, she said.
“All the communication is, ‘Go to the app, give them a call’, but it leads nowhere … so I couldn’t actually get a hold of anybody to see what we should do.”
At Raleigh-Durham International Airport, realising delays meant they couldn’t make their San Francisco connection, United re-booked the family to fly home via Houston.
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When she was eventually able to speak to someone from Air New Zealand she was told the national carrier couldn’t help as the flight delays were with United, said Jones, a frequent flyer gold tier member.
“At the same time the United agents were telling me, ‘Get to where you need to be - a hub’, and to deal with it in Houston.
“But it is actual chaos in Houston. I wish we hadn’t gone on the flight.”
While the layover in Houston was an hour and a half when re-booked, further delays eventually shortened that gap to 20 minutes, Jones said.
Because she didn’t need to go through check-in or security in Houston, it was a quick transfer to NZ29′s departure gate - but not quick enough, with the family arriving at 10pm for the 9.55pm flight.
They were sorry Jones missed her connection due to the late arrival of her United Airlines flight, “which was two hours late”, an Air NZ spokeswoman said.
There had also been a high volume of calls to the airline’s Customer Care team yesterday due to the global IT outage, the spokeswoman said.
NZ29 was delayed and left at 10.30pm, but she and other late passengers - around a dozen, including a young family of four from Wellington - were not allowed to board because the gate had already closed, Jones said.
Gate agents were not able to help them before an Air New Zealand ground agent told Jones to again contact United, and that they didn’t know if there’d be space for the trio on the next scheduled flight from Houston to Auckland.
“[They said], ‘It’s not our problem … and we don’t know if there will be space’ [on the next flight to Auckland].
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“So I have no idea when we’re gonna get home.”
The family - who have travel insurance - have since found a hotel for the night, but Jones worried for other stranded Kiwis.
United’s flight delays weren’t Air New Zealand’s fault but the airline could’ve been more empathetic to her and other passengers affected by a cyber outage that was “an unprecedented event”, Jones said.
“On their social media, they’re saying, ‘We’re fine, we’re keeping in touch with people’ and I just want people to know that is completely far from the truth.
“I guess why we usually love our national airline is because they go above and beyond. But not this time.”
Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.
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