General News
26 July, 2024
Locals caught in global IT outage
A PAIR of local avid Gold Coast Suns supporters were among thousands across the world impacted by the Microsoft/CrowdStrike IT outage over the weekend.
The outage impacted supermarkets, banks, and forced the cancellation of flights from various airlines due to an inability to access computers.
Gavin Riches and his daughter Hayley were on their way to last Saturday’s Suns game against Greater Western Sydney (GWS) at ENGIE Stadium in Homebush when they discovered their flight to Sydney was cancelled due to the outage.
Mr Riches said they made the decision to leave from Colac early after hearing talk of technical issues on Friday afternoon.
“We went through the checkout, going through the metal detector and all that, and discovered the flight was cancelled,” he said.
“I spoke with JetStar, and they said,“we can’t be sure if there’s a flight going out of Tullamarine”, but we thought we’d try our luck anyway.
“We headed towards Tullamarine, and Hayley was on the telephone trying to get a flight with Virgin. She actually got flights, but they were $930 one-way to Sydney, so we said we won’t worry about that.
“We decided, spur-of-the-moment, that we’d see if we could get accommodation. Michelle, my wife, found accommodation for us at Wagga Wagga so we decided we’ll do it.”
This decision led to a 2200 kilometre round trip and close to 24 hours of driving to travel to the game and then back home to Camperdown.
Mr Riches said they arrived at their accommodation in Wagga Wagga at 1am, before waking up and continuing their journey to the Suns VS GWS game at 7am.
“We got into Sydney Olympic Park at about 12.30pm and we watched the game, which started at 1.45pm. We did a little bit after the game, so we were there probably about five hours,” he said.
“We turned around and went back to Wagga Wagga and then back home on the Sunday.
“It’s just what you do as supporters.
“We’re just avid Sun supporters, and we just took the punt to do it.
“If we had to have just gone home and just laid low for a couple of days until it all came back on, there’s no point getting upset over it because it happens.”
Mr Riches said he was thankful to have cash on him, since the IT outage resulted in supermarkets being unable to process card payments.
“I’ve always said how you should always have cash on you, and no-one has cash, so I was even able to go to the supermarket to get groceries because I had cash on me,” he said.
“We were more worried about fuel – going that distance, we wouldn’t be able to get fuel.
“We got some in Winchelsea and I was actually quite shocked that they were still taking credit cards.
“They said they didn’t even know anything about it, so some fuel stations were out, and others weren’t – the two places we stopped at to get fuel on the way up, they were open which was good.”
Mr Riches approached the issue with an “it is what it is” attitude but provided some advice for travelers.
“Always get to an airport early in case you’ve got a change of plans, but how often does this sort of thing happen?” he said.
“I jokingly said to Hayley it’s the joys of computers because I’m not a fan of computers, and sometimes these things backfire.
“There’s always going to be faults in computers over time because they’re just not fool-proof.”
Read More: Camperdown