Global Systems Outage Wrecks Havoc on Air Travel
Thousands of flights were grounded Friday in the U.S. as a technical disaster impacted operations at government agencies and businesses worldwide, such as airlines and airports but also banks, shops, hospitals, courts, broadcasters and more.
The issues began as CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity technology firm, released an update that began impacting IT systems globally. Microsoft said it has already fixed the issue, but problems still persist and blue error screens are appearing on public screens across the U.S. and beyond.
The Texas-based company said the problem stemmed from a “defect found in a single content update for Windows.”
All flights for US carriers United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and American Airlines were grounded early on Friday due to these issues, before operations started ramping up again. Other airlines were affected as well, but not to the same extent. Almost 3,000 flights were canceled. Southwest Airlines and JetBlue were not impacted by the outage.
Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina told passengers to not come to the airport unless they had confirmed their flights.
The world’s busiest airport in Atlanta was packed with stranded passengers as they tried to get information on if and when their flights would take off.
At LAX, officials handing out water to the long line of people waiting to rebook flights. Lines were stretched outside the airport.
Similar scenes unfolded at many other airports around the country and the world, although travel has resumed and hopefully delays won’t linger for too long.
The Federal Aviation Administration “is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines,” the agency posted on X.
Are you traveling today? Did this outage impact your travels? let us know in the comments!
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