Major IT Outage Disrupts Global Air Travel — 4th Update

By Cristina Gallardo and Mauro Orru

Travelers around the world faced significant disruptions Friday in the wake of a global tech outage for millions of users of Microsoft Windows devices that hit a range of industries.

Thousands of passengers are dealing with delays and cancellations on trains and flights during the busy summer travel season.

The global outage was caused by an error in an update from CrowdStrike for its Windows customers, the cybersecurity firm's chief executive, George Kurtz, said. Its software is widely used by companies to protect the security of their machines.

"This is not a security incident or cyberattack," he said. "The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

Kurtz told CNBC Friday morning that some users were able to get back online but others would take more time.

Microsoft said the CrowdStrike error was separate from a problem it faced overnight with cloud services including Microsoft 365 apps. That outage prompted thousands of users to report problems to Downdetector.com, a website that tracks service disruptions.

Early Friday morning the Federal Aviation Administration issued ground-stop orders for several carriers including Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines, though flights were slowly coming back online.

Still, thousands of global flights had been delayed or canceled. More than 21,000 global flights were delayed according to flight-tracking website FlightAware and in the U.S. more than 1,000 flights were canceled, according to data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

Delta Air Lines said in a post on X that it resumed some flights and issued a travel waiver for impacted customers. American Airlines posted that it had managed to re-establish operations following disruption earlier. United Airlines posted some flights were resuming, though many passengers traveling Friday may still experience delays and issued a waiver to make it easier for customers to change their plans.

As of 9:00 a.m. ET, Delta had canceled more than 400 flights, American Airlines canceled more than 300 flights and United canceled almost 200 flights, according to FlightAware.

Across the Atlantic, airlines and airport operators reported disruptions caused by the IT outage. In Asia and Australia, operations at airports and carriers were hit by the tech issue as well.

Qantas, Australia's largest airline, said it was experiencing "some impacts to systems due to a global software issue that is impacting a number of other businesses." Meanwhile, Singapore Airlines said its reservation hotlines were experiencing technical issues, though flights were unaffected by the outage.

Brandenburg airport in Berlin temporarily halted operations, while Amsterdam's Schiphol airport said the global computer failure was having a major impact on flights to and from the airport. London's Heathrow airport said on X some of its systems were affected by the outage.

Arrivals at five European airports were regulated due to IT issues, according to Eurocontrol, the European air-safety control agency.

KLM Dutch Airlines said it had suspended most of its operations.

"We realize that, especially given the summer vacations, this is extremely inconvenient for our customers," a KLM spokesperson said. "We are working hard to resolve the problem. For now, we are forced to suspend most of the operation."

Norwegian Air Shuttle said its flights to Berlin and Amsterdam were delayed due to problems at destination airports and one aircraft en route to Berlin that it had to divert back to Oslo, a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, flights across Spain experienced delays, according to national airport operator Aena. However, the group said on X that it was recovering use of some of its systems, though some processes remain slow.

Dozens of flights were delayed from Barcelona and Madrid airports early Friday, according to their websites. In Italy, ITA Airways said the outage was causing significant disruption, with delays and cancellations.

Low-cost carrier Ryanair Holdings advised passengers to get to the airport three hours ahead of their departure times due to the outage.

Emran El-Badawi, an academic at University of Houston, said he was stuck at Gatwick Airport near London for more than three hours, waiting to check in a flight to Houston via Miami.

"So far everyone is in reasonably good spirits, calm but anxious," he said. "No announcements over microphones whatsoever. So far only a couple of barely helpful announcements by staff that computer systems are down."

Gatwick Airport said it started experiencing issues with some of its IT systems early this morning that were affecting some check-in systems, baggage and security. The airport is using a backup process and working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, it said.

Gatwick Express, the train operator connecting the airport with central London, warned that there could be short-notice cancellations in its services because of widespread IT issues.

-Dominic Chopping, Pierre Bertrand, Michael Susin and Ian Walker contributed to this article.

Write to Cristina Gallardo at cristina.gallardo@wsj.com and Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 19, 2024 09:40 ET (13:40 GMT)

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