An error message with a blue screen appeared on a PC screen running Microsoft windows 10 following a faulty update to the CrowdStrike company s cybersecurity software. Photo: SEBASTIEN LAPEYRERE / AFP
Even the far and away Northern Marianas was not spared by last weekend's worldwide tech outage as airlines, hotels, utilities, and possibly even the hospital experienced some form of outage caused by a faulty Microsoft Windows system update.
The Commonwealth Ports Authority (CPA) said its flights were delayed by hours due to the global computer glitch.
"It will probably take another day hopefully for everyone to be back to normal operations. Even the first United Airlines flight today from Saipan to Guam took about three hours to check everyone in manually before leaving Saipan," CPA chair Jose Ayuyu said on Monday.
CPA executive director Leo Tudela said that Jeju Air, which flight was supposed to arrive on Saipan at around 3am last Friday morning, arrived at the Francisco C. Ada/Saipan International Airport at around 7pm; and United, which flight was supposed to arrive at around 9am on Friday, arrived at around 3am on Saturday.
Aside from delayed flights to Saipan, check-in counters at airport were also affected by the tech outage with Tudela saying many things had to be done manually when checking in passengers.
For instance, a number of Customs and Border Protection personnel were present at airport to screen travelers who arrived on Saipan as CBP's system was also impacted by the tech outage as they had to switch from a paperless to a manual process.
Meanwhile, Hotel Association of the Northern Mariana Islands chair Dennis Seo said local hotels were also affected by the worldwide tech outage.
"Apparently, some of our members experienced problems due to [the] global Microsoft outage, including computer issues and credit card merchant outages," he said.
"There were also a couple of international passenger flights from Korea that arrived a few hours late due to the system [being] down. They had to have their passenger checked manually prior to boarding."
Seo shared that most hotels have Crisis Management or Emergency Manuals in place for possible computer system disruptions like last weekend's global Microsoft outage or even power outages.
"We have acquired the standard operating procedure for system outages by going through the past two typhoons in 2015 and 2018. Therefore, we believe that we will be able to take all necessary measures to ensure that customers who are already fatigued from potential flight delays can use the hotel without any inconvenience.
"We will also take this opportunity to thoroughly review and update our emergency manual to ensure it is well-prepared. In addition, we are recommending that our guests check their flight status in case there are any delays for their departure to their destination," Seo said.
Also experiencing a system disruption over the weekend was the Commonwealth Utilities Corp (CUC) who sent out a notice last Friday informing the community that its pre-payment system was down.
"The CUC would like to inform the general public that its electric pre-pay system is currently offline due to technical difficulties that the provider is experiencing. Electric pre-pay customers who are without power before the system went down at 3:30pm and wish to reconnect their electric services are advised to make a payment of their dues by logging into their CUC account.
"After payment have been made, please call customer services for reconnection assistance. Electric customer who are currently connected will not be affected by this interruption. CUC appreciates the community's patience as its electric meter software provider works hard to restore Pay-Go services," CUC's notice said.
In a statement from CUC's Betty Terlaje, the outage was a result of the global tech outage, but fortunately CUC was able to get its system back up after just four hours.
The Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation, which runs the local hospital, said they will check their systems today to check if they too were affected by the global IT outage.
Telecom company Docomo Pacific and First Hawaiian Bank as well as small businesses said they did not appear to be affected by the tech outage last weekend.
Meanwhile, in Guam there were reports that systems were temporarily unavailable at Bank of Guam, affecting certain features with their online banking and branch operations, as well as some ATMs.
Japanese supermarket, Don Don Donki, in Guam announced that it was only accepting cash until further notice on Friday.
Debit cards, credit cards, EBT and DONKI app are temporarily down due to network issues.
A Guam Airport spokesperson Rolena Faasuamalie said there were no on Friday.
"Our airport operations professionals are monitoring the situation. We are aware of the reports by numerous media outlets that the 'outage' is affecting all stages of flight arrival and departures," she said.
Passengers are advised to contact airlines to ascertain any impact to their planned travel.
Other Pacific nations
In the Cook Islands, the government said it was not affected by the global IT outage.
A spokesperson said the government's IT team conducted a thorough check of the systems over two days, and everything is functioning normally.
In Samoa, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said it was closely monitoring the CrowdStrike cyber collapse.
In a statement, the Ministry said as one of the Microsoft users, there will likely be impacts in some operating systems except Linux and Apple.
The Ministry strongly advised organisations to make sure their IT staff recover the system files of computers, as well as ensuring that there is always a backup storage for files and systems in times of digital crisis.
