Technology outage leads to cancellations, delays at PDX

• The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that it is "closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines" and that several airlines had requested "assistance with ground stops for their fleets."
• George Kurtz, president and CEO of CrowdStrike, said in a post to X the company was "actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts."

Driving the news: American, Delta, United and Allegiant Airlines grounded flights early Friday morning due to communications issues, per an FAA alert.

Zoom in: At PDX, as of 9:45 a.m. Friday, 45 arriving flights were delayed and 12 were canceled according to FlyPDX.com.

• 26 departures were delayed and 11 were canceled, including those to Maui, Detroit and Dallas.
• Most departures were delayed although five Southwest Airlines flights were on time at 9:10am.
• The airport's website was down briefly on Friday morning but returned online before 8am.

What they did: Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler issued an emergency declaration at 3am Friday to get city systems back up.

• The CrowdStrike crash was first reported Thursday evening. It affected some City of Portland computers, including the Bureau of Emergency Communication Computer Aided Dispatch system, which briefly switched to manual call-taking but was back up and running as of 6am.
• "At no time was the community's ability to make 911 calls impacted," Wheeler wrote in a press release.

Context: It was the first big test of the city's new structure as bureaus are no longer headed by council members but by interim city administrators.

• "The city's contingency plans for technology outages prepared us for this ongoing situation," said Interim City Administrator Michael Jordan.