Hawaii travelers and residents felt the effects of the global tech outage that grounded flights and disrupted businesses Thursday night and Friday, but the impact in the islands was not widespread.
“(Thursday) evening, a number of airlines servicing Hawaii were affected, issuing systemwide ground stops,” Hawaii Acting Gov. Sylvia Luke said in a statement Friday. But the airline communication systems were back online by Friday morning she said.
The state Department of Transportation said late Thursday night that the ground stops at United, Delta and American airlines led to the cancelation of six flights with about 1,500 passengers at Kahului Airport; six flights with 1,000 passengers at the Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keahole; nine flights with 2,700 passengers at the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu; and two flights at Lihue Airport.
Luke, who is serving as acting governor while Gov. Josh Green is out of state, said that “the State of Hawaii’s IT system remains unaffected by the global CrowdStrike and Microsoft technology outage. My office has been in contact with our hospitals, banks, telecommunications, and other key public services to which no significant impacts have been reported.”
Operations at Kauai’s County Department of Motor Vehicles were briefly hobbled Friday by the global outage that began when a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike went awry.
Kauai DMV officials said in Friday morning that its services were limited and that driver’s license transactions were unavailable. All DMV kiosks were also inoperable.
“Our IT officials have been working through the night on the disruption that has affected our County of Kauai systems,” said Finance Director Michelle Lizama in a statement. “We have restored most of our systems to full operation; however, we are still experiencing several issues with our computers that provide DMV function.”
By early afternoon, county officials said most DMV services had been restored.