Travel organizations almost done dealing with aftermath of worldwide Windows outage

Travel organizations and airlines are working hard to help the last passengers who suffered delays due to last Friday's worldwide Windows outage. This is different from last weekend when some travel organizations had to help "10 percent of their customers to rebook," said director Frank Radstake of the Dutch Association of Travel Agents and Tour Operators ANVR.

According to Radstake, most ANVR members, including airlines like Corendon and TUI, now mainly carry out custom work. "We are in the concluding phase, but our businesses still need to look for the best solution for every customer who has to deal with this." It is unclear how many passengers are still being helped with their delays.

The Windows outage did not only give the organizations more work but also more costs. Radstake said that it is unclear what the exact damage is for the organizations. "We are now really busy with helping people get on their way." Radstake does not think that the damage suffered by the organizations will be recovered. "Basically, it's an entrepreneurial risk."

Most large airlines have their affairs in order again. A spokesperson for Transavia said that some minor after-effects are the only thing that remains for them.

A spokesperson for Corendon said that the effects were quite limited for them either way as they don't use CrowdStrike's software, which caused the chaos. KLM announced on Sunday that it had made a rebooking proposal for all passengers whose flights were canceled due to computer malfunctions.

Independent tech expert Bert Hubert said that the total costs of the outage are very hard to map out. "The final costs of this are very spread out."

In addition, restoring the affected computers is accessible in some cases but "intensely difficult" in others. This causes varying costs among companies. According to Hubert, the total amount depends on how a company has organized the security of their computers. "It's paradoxical: the better the security, the more difficult the recovery work."

CEO Patrick Anderson of the American analysis agency Anderson Economic Group told CNN that the total damage from the outage "could easily exceed 1 billion dollars." But according to Hubert, "we will probably never get a real dollar amount."