The Tribune

By Fay Simmons

Tribune Business Reporter

jsimmons@tribunemedia.net

A global technology shortage affected services at Lynden Pindling International Airport on Friday.

The global outage created a massive disruption as flights were grounded and banks were knocked offline for hours.

Nassau Airport Development (NAD) confirmed the issues affected their operations with several flights being delayed and some vendors experiencing challenges processing credit card transactions.

“Due to global internet issues, we are currently experiencing some disruptions that are impacting certain operations at Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA).

“At present, passengers are being processed in the check-in areas at all terminals (US Departures and International/Domestic Departures). Bahamas Customs and Immigration are also able to process arriving passengers. US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) officers are currently operating on a backup system to process US-bound travellers,” said NAD’s statement.

“There have also been reports of flight delays by some airlines.

“Commercial operations are also being impacted by the global issues with some vendors having challenges processing credit card transactions.”

The issues continued throughout the day with a 5pm update revealing that flights were delayed at LPIA by up to five hours.

NAD encouraged passengers to check for updates with their airlines and noted that vendors were still experiencing difficulties with credit card payments.

“Operations at Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA) continue to be impacted by the global internet outage, said NAD’s update.

“Currently, airline operators are experiencing significant delays for arriving and departing flights particularly those operating from the US Departures terminal. Some airlines are estimating delays of 2-5 hours for both inbound and outbound flights.

“Passengers are being processed through checkpoints in all terminals. US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) have returned to their main operating system and, as of this update, continue to process passengers.

“Retail and food and beverage operators are reporting challenges with payment processing and ATMs in terminal are working intermittently.

“We ask the traveling public for continued patience as LPIA stakeholders work to mitigate the fallout from this global issue.”

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike maintained the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack but they encountered a problem when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.

Local businesses including supermarkets also reported that credit card machines were not operational on Friday morning.

RBC in a statement on social media announced its services were been affected by the outage and they were “actively investigating and solutions are being deployed”.

“Clients may have difficulty accessing their account information and may experience delays in their transactions. Our teams are working diligently to restore access as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and we apologise for the inconvenience”, said RBC.

John Rolle, the governor of the Central Bank of The Bahamas posted to social media to say that the “international banking disruption is also having its impact on The Bahamas”.

He said: “Some card payment services were offline and may still be. The Central Bank is monitoring the impact on local commercial banks.”