Crowds are seen piling up at Suvarnabhumi Airport due to a global IT disruption caused by a Microsoft system outage and an IT issue from Crowdstrike, affecting users on July 19, 2024 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Miley Austin Tan | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Several airlines grounded flights on Friday, while others warned of delays and service disruptions due to an unprecedented IT outage that has impacted global operations.
Early Friday, the cybersecurity giant announced Crowd Strike The internet service experienced a major outage related to a technology update. Organizations including Microsoft were forced to quickly restore applications and services used by large numbers of businesses.
Flight update and check-in screens at airports around the world have shown the so-called blue screen of death, indicating that Microsoft Images shared on social media showed a white board displaying flight updates at Belfast International Airport in Northern Ireland, and a handwritten boarding pass for a flight with India's IndiGo.
“It seems that for the first time we are facing a truly global power outage,” Grzegorz Drozdz, a market analyst at Konotxia, said in emailed comments. “The disruption affected not only individual users, but particularly large institutions such as banks (including central banks), stock exchanges and airports, paralyzing operations during the holiday season and causing chaos in many other sectors.”
According to FlightAware data, about 30,000 flights worldwide were delayed as of 12 p.m. ET on Friday, including about 5,400 flights within, to or from the United States. More than 3,200 flights were canceled, including about 2,000 flights within the United States.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday on CNBC's “Squawk on the Street” that he expects the transportation delays to be resolved and “back to normal” by Saturday.
“The problem has been identified. It’s really a matter of sort of a cascading or ripple effect where they’re bringing everything back to normal in their networks,” Buttigieg said. “These flights are so closely intertwined that even after you address the root cause, you can still feel those effects throughout the day.”
A global IT outage is expected to impact airports around the world on July 19, 2024.
Kevin Breuninger | CNBC
Airlines in Europe, the Middle East, the Americas and Asia have issued updates outlining the suspected extent of the impact on their flight schedules and wider services, with passengers advised to check the status of their flights.
“The FAA continues to work closely with airlines as they work to resume normal operations. Ground stops and delays will be intermittent at various airports as airlines work to resolve remaining technology issues,” the FAA said at 10:22 a.m. ET.
American Airlines The company said that as of 5 a.m. ET, it was able to “safely restart our operations.” The company added: “We expect there to be an impact to our flight schedule today, including delays and cancellations.”
Delta and united Both airlines said they had resumed some departures but expected delays and cancellations through Friday. All three airlines have issued waivers to allow customers to change their travel plans.
Colby Black, 45, took the delay with ease, even though he wasn't sure when his rescheduled flight to Los Angeles would take off.
“It says 8 a.m. on the board, but on my app it’s 9 a.m., so who knows?” he said of the flight, which was originally scheduled to leave at 6 a.m. “I’m just tired. I want to sleep, but other than that, yeah, it happens,” added Black, who woke up at 3 a.m.
Travelers wait at check-in desks at Berlin Airport during an IT outage that disrupted airline services here and around the world on July 19, 2024 in Schoenefeld, Germany.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
In Europe, Dutch airline KLM said its IT issues were “almost completely resolved” and that air traffic to and from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport could “fully resume” after most KLM operations were suspended in the morning.
However, the airline added that several flights were delayed or cancelled and that disruptions would continue throughout the evening and into the weekend, with more flights possible.
KLM partner airline Air France British Airways said late Friday afternoon that its operations were “back to normal across the network”, with only certain flights to Amsterdam and Berlin affected during the day, but delays could not be ruled out.
Germany Lufthansa The company said the global outage was only “slightly affected,” with the biggest impact on flights to Berlin, Amsterdam and Zurich. German low-cost airline Eurowings, part of the same group, said it planned to operate around 80% of its flights, with most domestic flights cancelled.
During the morning, Swiss air navigation services company Skyguide said it had reduced Swiss transit traffic capacity by 30% as a precaution after being affected by the disruption.
Busiest days for flights in the UK
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic said some disruption to flights was expected on Friday.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium said Friday, July 19, will be the busiest day of the year for air travel, with the highest number of scheduled daily departures – 3,214 – since October 2019.
By 3 p.m. in London, 3,343 flights had been cancelled worldwide, Cirium said.
London's Gatwick and Heathrow airports said they were continuing to deal with issues and that delays were expected. Gatwick said the problems included “check-in and security systems for some airlines, including e-gates”.
Self-check-in systems were temporarily disrupted at several airports on Friday, including Taiwan's Taoyuan International Airport, Singapore's Changi Airport and Hong Kong International Airport.
Chinese airlines such as Air China and China Southern were not affected because they use a different system, Reuters reported, citing state media.
CNBC's Kevin Breuninger, Leslie Joseph and Ece Yildirim and NBC News' Carlo Angerer contributed to this report.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct a time reference.
