On July 19, 2024, crowds were seen crowding Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, as a global IT outage caused by a Microsoft outage and a Crowdstrike IT issue combined to impact users.
Maili Ostentan | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Several airlines suspended flights on Friday, while others warned of delays and service disruptions as the unprecedented IT outage impacts global operations.
Early Friday morning, cybersecurity giant Crowdstrike We experienced major disruptions related to technology updates, with organizations including Microsoft struggling to restore apps and services that many companies rely on.
Flight update and check-in monitors at airports around the world are showing the so-called ‘blue screen of death’ Microsoft System error. Images shared on social media show a whiteboard displaying flight updates at Belfast International Airport in Northern Ireland and a handwritten boarding pass for an IndiGo flight from India.
“For the first time, it seems like we are facing a real global blackout. … The disruption has particularly affected large institutions such as banks (including central banks), stock exchanges and airports, as well as individual users, paralyzing operations during the peak holiday season and causing disruption in many other sectors,” Grzegorz Drozdz, market analyst at Conotoxia, said in an emailed comment.
According to FlightAware data, as of 5 p.m. ET on Friday, more than 38,000 flights were delayed worldwide, about 9,200 of which were within, to, or from the U.S. More than 4,200 flights were canceled, about 2,650 of which were in the U.S.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that he expects traffic delays to ease and return to “normal levels” by Saturday.
“The issue has been identified. It’s really a ripple effect or a cascading effect that happens when everything on the network is brought back to normal,” Buttigieg said. “These flights are so tight and back-to-back that the impact can be felt throughout the day even after the root cause is addressed.”
On July 19, 2024, a global IT outage occurs at airports around the world.
Kevin Broninger | CNBC
Airlines across Europe, the Middle East, the Americas and Asia have issued updates outlining the extent of the impact on flight schedules and services, and are advising passengers to check flight status.
The Federal Aviation Administration said at 10:22 a.m. ET that “the FAA is working closely with airlines as they work to resume normal operations. Intermittent ground stops and delays will occur at various airports as airlines resolve any remaining technical issues.”
American Airlines As of 5 a.m. ET, the airline said it was able to “safely resume operations.” The airline also said it “expects impacts to today’s flight schedule, including delays and cancellations.”
Delta and United Both airlines said they were resuming some flights, but said delays and cancellations were expected through Friday. All three airlines issued waivers to allow customers to change their travel plans.
Colby Black, 45, wasn’t sure when his flight to Los Angeles would leave, but he accepted the delay.
“It says 8 a.m. on the board, but the app says 9 a.m., so who knows,” he said of the flight that was originally scheduled to leave at 6 a.m. “I’m just tired. I want to sleep,” Black said, waking up at 3 a.m. “But otherwise, yeah, sometimes it happens.”
Travelers wait during an IT outage that disrupted airline services at the check-in counters at Berlin Airport in Schonefeld, Germany, on July 19, 2024.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
In Europe, Dutch airline KLM said IT issues had been “almost completely resolved” and air traffic to and from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport could “fully resume” after most KLM flights were suspended in the morning.
However, the airline added that many flights have been delayed or cancelled and that the disruption will continue into the evening and into the weekend, with more cancellations likely.
KLM’s partner airlines Air France Late on Friday afternoon, it said “the entire network is back to normal” after some flights to Amsterdam and Berlin were affected during the day, but it could not rule out delays.
Germany’s Lufthansa It said it was “only slightly affected” by the global outage, with the biggest impact being on routes to Berlin, Amsterdam and Zurich. Eurowings, a low-cost German carrier in the same group, said it planned to operate around 80% of its flights, mostly domestic routes.
Swiss air service provider SkyGuide said this morning that it was reducing Swiss transit traffic by 30% as a precaution after being affected by the disruption.
Busiest days for UK flights
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, both British airlines, said they expected some flight disruptions on Friday.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium predicts Friday, July 19, will be the busiest day of the year for air travel, with the most daily departures (3,214) since October 2019.
According to Cirium, as of 5pm London time, 4,295 flights have been cancelled worldwide, representing 3.9% of scheduled flights worldwide.
London airports Gatwick and Heathrow both said they were continuing to manage the issue and that delays were expected. Gatwick said the issue spanned “security, including some airlines’ check-in systems and eGates”.
Self-check-in systems were temporarily suspended at several airports on Friday, including Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport, Singapore’s Changi Airport and Hong Kong International Airport.
Mainland Chinese airlines such as Air China and China Southern Airlines were not affected as they use a different system, Reuters reported, citing state media.
— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger, Leslie Josephs and Ece Yildirim and NBC News’ Carlo Angerer Contribution Report.
Correction: This article has been updated to correct time references.
