The effects of Friday's global computer glitchare still being felt. And while almost every business was impacted, the airline industry was one of the hardest hit.
According to Flight Aware, over the weekend, there were nearly 32,000 delays and over 7500 cancellations, and today isn't shaping up to be much better. Right now, there are 440 delays in the U.S. and 521 cancellations. At DTW specifically, 10 flights are delayed and 51 flights are cancelled.
This tech scare has a lot of people wondering: are we too reliant on technology? I spoke to a couple of former IT professionals, and a couple who dealt with the travel chaos first-hand.
"Technology is great as long as it works," said Sherrie Kunzelmann, a healthcare professional. Sherrie and her husband, Brian, who both work in the healthcare industry in North Carolina, have struggled with flight delays and cancellations all weekend.
"We were in the airport for about five hours, and sure enough, the flight's cancelled," Brian said.
I also talked to some former IT professionals who are worried about the next generation.
"We stay so close to the airport, at 5:30 in the morning, we can usually hear planes taking off, and we didn't hear anything," said Leon Wallace.
"I remember when Y2K was an issue and everyone was worried about computers not turning over," said Dashawn Wallace. "It was at that point that I was like 'why are we so worried that this is going to change everything?' Right? Even then I was saying, we should probably not put all our eggs into one basket."
How disappointing has it been for our travelers heading south?
"I'm supposed to work tomorrow, and we can't even get a flight until tomorrow night," Sherrie said. "We tried to rent a car, and we're unable to rent a car because they've all been rented."
"I think this week's incident is an indicator of how less reliant we need to be with technology and more dependent on old technology," Leon said. "Pen and paper, regular telephone and things like that."
"Today in schools they're not even teaching writing, cursive writing any more" Sherrie said. "High school graduates now can't even write their names in cursive."
On the flip side, there are also good things about technology.
"It can speed things up, it can allow you to find things that otherwise you'd be looking for a needle in a haystack," Brian said.
It's important to find a happy medium when it comes to technology use.
"I don't know if you're old enough to remember, but you used to get a check and then they forced you into Direct Deposit," Dushawn said. "Older people used to keep money in their mattresses and stuff because of the distrust of banks, and now this kind of feeds into that."
I can't even remember the last time I wrote a check or wrote a letter.
"This would be interesting: stop a kid and ask them to address an envelope," Dushawn suggested. "They don't know how, where the address goes and where the return address goes...at least learn your Mom's number, Faraz."
The next generation might not even know what pen & paper is.
"Period," Dushawn said. "Not at all, pencil and paper, ink pen, they are going back to handwriting in schools, because (kids) won't be able to read historical documents."
