ENUMCLAW, Wash. — An Enumclaw woman is driving from Alabama to Washington state to deliver her mother's ashes after her flights home were continuously delayed by the CrowdStrike outage.
Heather Francisco said she planned to honor her mother's wishes by scattering her ashes in Mississippi where she was originally from. Then Francisco would fly home Sunday afternoon to Washington state.
Instead, Francisco's return flights were delayed again and again as Delta Airlines dealt with the fallout of the CrowdStrike outage.
At one point, Francisco said Delta lost her luggage that contained her mother's ashes. One day later the airline found her missing bag, labeled as "fragile," but Francisco was not any closer to securing a flight back to Washington state.
Frustrated with the delays, Francisco decided to change her plans and drive cross country to Washington state. She was not able to make it to Mississippi to fulfill her mother's wish.
"I'm just going to drive home," Francisco said. "The last thing I want - I already saw a massive amount of luggage piling up - I can't do that. I've got my mom in here. I can't have her lost in Argentina or God knows where else."
Now Francisco is driving 2,500 miles to Washington with her mother's ashes alongside her in the car.
“The funny thing is my mom always said she didn’t wanna fly," Francisco said. "She never wanted to fly again. But that she wanted to take a road trip back to Mississippi with me. I guess she’ll get her wish after all.”
Francisco, who was recently diagnosed with cancer, had to miss an oncology appointment in Washington because she was not able to return home as planned.
Francisco said Delta eventually refunded the cost of her return flight, which was never fulfilled.
CrowdStrike blamed a bug Thursday in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off last week's global tech outage that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers.
CrowdStrike outlined measures it would take to prevent the problem from recurring, including staggering the rollout of updates, giving customers more control over when and where they occur, and providing more details about the updates that it plans.
"Now it's (going to be) a solid four days of driving," Francisco said. "And it's expensive."
But before she could start her drive, Francisco could not secure a rental car in Florida because her flights were delayed. She needed to have a family member drive her from Florida to Alabama to reserve a rental car for her cross-country trip.
Francisco said Thursday she is not sure if she has enough paid time off from work to cover the extra days she's missing because of the delays.
As of Thursday, Francisco was driving through Texas.
"It's putting stress on me, my family and my coworkers," Francisco said. "It's tough."