Local flights affected by technology outage

WAYNE COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) - Local travelers looking forward to a getaway are affected by the widespread technology outage.

Passengers waiting at Huntington Tri-State Airport for a flight to Myrtle Beach learned a little after 10 a.m. Friday that their flight, scheduled to take off at 10:57 a.m., was canceled due to the outage.

Alyssa Ihlenfeld, who lives in Huntington, was planning to fly to the beach with her parents and sister for a long weekend. She says it’s too late to cancel their hotel reservations, so now they’ll be making the 8-hour drive to Myrtle.

“You can’t have a bad attitude about it, or you’re just going to be upset,” Ihlenfeld said.

Ashley Draper, the Director of Administration for the airport, says two Allegiant flights were canceled. The other was Flight 1077 to St. Petersburg, Florida, which was scheduled to depart at 3:06 Friday afternoon.

Draper says the Allegiant computer began working again around 1 p.m. Friday, and no more flights are expected to be affected.

She says they’ve been working to get passengers who were booked on the flight to St. Petersburg redirected onto other flights.

Draper says earlier, Allegiant was unable to send texts or emails to alert passengers of the cancellations due to the outage.

Allegiant passengers whose Myrtle Beach flight was canceled were told they’d be getting a full refund, a $75 voucher, and $100 deposited into their account.

Draper says an American Airlines flight to Charlotte was able to depart from Tri-State at 6:20 Friday morning, and they had to manually write tickets. They were able to do that because they had the manifest, Draper says.

Paige Withrow, the chief marketing officer for West Virginia International Yeager Airport, says they had four flights delayed Friday morning.

“I really want to thank our airline agents and our TSA agents,” Withrow said. “They were working really hard to get people re-scheduled, rebooked, and through security.”

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