SEATAC, Washington. – Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is still experiencing delays and cancellations following a cyberattack over the weekend.

The disruptions resulted in several flight cancellations and numerous delays, leaving both travelers and officials grappling with the ongoing consequences.

Kalpen Patel, who was travelling home to Sydney after attending a wedding in Seattle, shared his experience with the delays.

“We got here about three and a half hours early,” Patel explained. “We just had a great time here. It was really great. I love, love the people here.”

However, Patel expressed fear of missing his connecting flight, which could lead to a longer delay. “I was worried about it and just thought, ‘I don’t want to miss this flight’ and then we don’t get another flight until tomorrow,” Patel said.

The cyberattack has created numerous challenges for passengers, from malfunctioning flight information displays to concerns about baggage handling.

“I was looking every second and thinking, ‘Oh, I hope I’m not here anymore,'” said Trenton Braswell, who is traveling to Denver.

On Monday, airport officials held a press conference to discuss the situation. Officials said they did not have an estimated time for full restoration. “We are still working to restore full service with the help of industry experts and partners, but there is currently no estimated time for return,” said Perry Cooper, a Sea-Tac spokesman. Cooper added that some airlines, including Frontier, Sun Country and Spirit, as well as several international carriers, were among the hardest hit.

The cyberattack also impacted the airport’s baggage handling system, which spans more than 10 miles of conveyor belts.

“They can be taken to a certain point, but they cannot be distributed to the different areas of the airport where they are loaded onto their respective aircraft,” Cooper explained. This has caused delays in baggage handling, requiring staff to step in to help passengers check in manually.

Although TSA checkpoints are operating smoothly over their own network, the airport recommends that travelers not pack a lot of luggage, arrive early, and carry boarding documents either on hand or on their cell phone, as the airport’s Wi-Fi is down.

Cooper noted that the airport became aware of the cyberattack on Saturday morning when it discovered “malicious characters” in its system.

“We actually shut down our entire system to prevent further damage,” Cooper said.

According to FlightAware, the airport had registered 177 delays and seven cancellations by Monday afternoon.

The investigation into the cyberattack is ongoing. Sea-Tac is working with federal partners to determine what information, if any, was compromised. “To my knowledge, we have not seen anything (compromised), but that is part of our investigation,” Cooper said.

In response to the cyber incident, the Port of Seattle disabled access to its internal systems and website and instructed employees not to log in or click on suspicious links or pop-ups.

“We are still investigating what exactly happened, how it happened and how we can prevent it in the future,” Cooper said. “We hope to learn more as the investigation progresses.”

Despite the disruptions, cruise ship operations in the Port of Seattle are continuing as usual. However, as a result of the power outage, the maritime facilities’ telephone systems have failed.

Cybersecurity experts such as Corey Nachreiner of WatchGuard warned that such attacks may not always be targeted.

“They don’t always go after these organizations in a super-targeted way, but if they happen to find that one of their partners has hacked something, they spend a lot of time getting to know the network, and of course they stage the ransomware so that it hits many devices at the same time,” Nachreiner explains.

As Memorial Day approaches, airport officials are urging travelers to prepare for possible delays and disruptions. Sea-Tac is also working with federal partners to determine what these “nefarious characters” had access to and what they wanted.

Due to the outage, several airport services, including the SEA Visitor Pass and Lost and Found, are currently unavailable.

“Our priority remains to support travelers affected by this situation,” Cooper said.

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