Global Cyber Outage Hurt July Airport Traffic

Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. Image from the airport.

Passenger traffic at Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport continued its upward trajectory in July, but it could have gone higher.

While Milwaukee hosted thousands of visitors for the 2024 Republican National Convention, a major IT failure disrupted major systems, including air travel, worldwide. Delta Air Lines, Milwaukee Mitchell’s second busiest carrier, was particularly hard hit. The airline canceled flights all across the country in the days following the cyber outage.

The airport has been on a hot streak traffic-wise in 2024. Travelers have steadily returned to Milwaukee Mitchell since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, sinking air traffic for several years.

The airport saw more than 6 million passengers in 2023 for the first time since the pandemic, and 2024 is on pace to greatly improve upon those numbers. During the first six months of 2024, passenger traffic outpaced 2023 by approximately 10.9%, with 3.2 million travelers flying through Milwaukee Mitchell.

Milwaukee was expecting 50,000 new visitors in July, with many flying into Milwaukee’s airport. Airlines even scheduled several flights in and out of Milwaukee specifically for the event, which ran from July 15-18.

The airport saw an increase in traffic directly related to the RNC, said Harold Mester, director of Public Affairs and Marketing for Milwaukee Mitchell. But the event also depressed the number of non-RNC travelers flying in and out of Milwaukee Mitchell.

“We accommodated a large number of people going to and from the RNC, and in fact, that was probably the vast majority of our traffic coming through during those peak days. What we were not seeing was the type of traffic that we normally see during July,” Mester said.

What increase the airport did see was also partially offset by the cyber failure. On July 19, as thousands of RNC visitors were preparing to leave Milwaukee, a faulty software update knocked out cyber systems across multiple industries, globally, including banking, health care and shipping.

Air carriers and airports all across the world were affected by the outage. Delta canceled thousands of flights over five days following the outage.

In Milwaukee, this translated to Delta flying approximately 4,000 fewer passengers in and out of Milwaukee Mitchell in July this year than it did last year, bucking the trend of year-over-year growth the airport has seen each month so far in 2024.

Even with the major disruption, the airport still finished July with 32,853 more passengers than the same month last year.