A large crowd is seen at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, on July 19, 2024, due to a global cyber outage triggered by issues with Microsoft and CrowdStrike.
Airlines around the world faced significant disruption on Friday, as a major cyber outage caused widespread flight delays and cancellations.
The outage was caused by a major technology upgrade from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which led to a cascade of issues affecting Microsoft systems, leaving numerous organizations scrambling to restore critical applications and services.
Airports around the world have been displaying the infamous “blue screen of death” on flight update and check-in screens, indicating serious system errors. Social media has been flooded with images of disrupted services, including handwritten boarding passes at IndiGo in India and malfunctioning screens at Belfast International Airport in Northern Ireland.
Grzegorz Drozdz, market analyst at Conotoxia, commented: “This is an unprecedented global blackout that affects not only individual users, but also major institutions such as banks, stock exchanges and airports, causing chaos during the peak travel season.”
As of 5 p.m. ET Friday, FlightAware reported more than 38,000 delayed flights worldwide, including about 9,200 within, into, or out of the United States. More than 4,200 flights were canceled, including about 2,650 within the United States.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that he expects the situation to stabilize by Saturday. “The root cause has been identified and now it’s a matter of managing the ripple effects as systems return to normal,” Buttigieg said.
Airlines in Europe, the Middle East, the Americas and Asia have released updates on the impact on their schedules, advising passengers to check flight statuses. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said: “We are working closely with airlines to resume normal operations. Groundings and delays will occur intermittently as residual technology issues are resolved.”
American Airlines announced it had resumed operations by 5 a.m. ET, but expected continued delays and cancellations. Delta and United Airlines also reported resuming departures, but expected disruptions through Friday. All three airlines offered waivers to customers to change their travel plans.
Colby Black, a traveler affected by delays, shared his experience: “My flight has been rescheduled multiple times. It’s exhausting, but I’m just trying to be patient.”
In Europe, KLM said its IT issues were nearly resolved, allowing air traffic at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to fully resume. However, the airline warned of ongoing delays and cancellations through the weekend. KLM’s partner Air France confirmed that operations were back to normal, although some delays could still occur.
Germany’s Lufthansa has seen minimal disruption, with the most significant impact on routes to Berlin, Amsterdam and Zurich. Eurowings, part of the same group, plans to operate about 80 percent of its flights, with the majority of cancellations on domestic routes.
As a precaution, the Swiss airline Skyguide has reduced its transit capacity in Switzerland by 30%.
Busiest travel day in the UK
Both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic had expected some disruption on what was the busiest travel day of the year in the UK, with 3,214 scheduled departures. As of 5pm in London, Cirium reported 4,295 cancelled flights globally, representing 3.9% of all scheduled flights.
London Gatwick and Heathrow airports continued to manage disruptions, anticipating delays. Gatwick specifically cited impacts on check-in and security systems, including eGates.
Several airports, including Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Singapore Changi Airport and Hong Kong International Airport, have temporarily deactivated self-service check-in systems.
According to state media reports via Reuters, mainland Chinese airlines, such as Air China and China Southern, were not affected by the incident because they used different systems.