The outage also affected sectors ranging from banks to media companies. (Representative)
Washington DC:
Airline passengers in the United States faced delays, while some airlines halted flight operations as Microsoft-based computers stopped working after a global outage on Friday.
Many US airports experienced unexpected disruptions, with more than 1,100 flights canceled and more than 1,700 flights behind schedule on Friday morning (local time) after certain Microsoft cloud services were disrupted.
These disruptions caused a hardship for people flying to and from various airports across the US, with many of them expressing frustration over the unexpected flight delays and cancellations.
“Nobody here knows anything, the gate agents said we all know as much as they do,” a United Airlines passenger told ANI, saying his flight from Milwaukee to Washington was delayed for hours, first at the gates and then hours on the asphalt.
Another passenger, Mack, said: “I’m on my way home… I didn’t know the internet was out. It’s a worldwide outage.”
A passenger named Giane said, “I haven’t heard anything from the airline I’m traveling with. I just saw a news alert pop up on my phone… I’m tired, I want to go home.”
CrowdStrike – a US cybersecurity technology company that provides cloud workload protection, threat intelligence and cyber attack response services – said the outage, which led to chaos for many, was not a “cyber attack”. Instead, there was a problem with the software and a fix had been implemented.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), several U.S. airlines, including American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, issued ground stops for all their flights early Friday due to communications issues.
The FAA has instructed air traffic controllers to tell pilots in the air that airlines are currently experiencing communications problems. According to flight tracking website FlightAware, as of 8:05 a.m. ET (Eastern Time), there were more than 1,100 canceled flights and more than 1,700 delays.
“A third-party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide, including at United,” United Airlines said in a statement Friday morning. “While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports. Flights already in the air will continue to their destinations.”
“We are aware of a technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple airlines. American is working with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and apologizes to our customers for the inconvenience,” American Airlines said in a statement .
The outage also affected sectors ranging from banks to media companies.
“We are investigating an issue impacting users’ access to various Microsoft 365 apps and services,” Microsoft said in a statement on social media Friday morning.
After several companies around the world reported IT outages on Friday, including seeing the “Windows blue screen of death,” CrowdStrike, the security company linked to a software update that caused the outage, said earlier in the day that the problem has been isolated and a solution has been implemented.
George Kurtz, president and CEO of CrowdStrike, said the cybersecurity company was working with customers on the issues they were facing, while providing assurances that the issue was “not a security incident or cyberattack.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also responded to the outage, saying that Microsoft is working closely with CrowdStrike to provide technical guidance and support to customers.
“Yesterday, CrowdStrike released an update impacting IT systems worldwide. We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and the industry as a whole to provide customers with technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online” , Nadella wrote on X .
On Friday, the outage affected companies across industries, from airlines, banks, food chains and real estate agencies to news organizations and rail networks. The travel industry was hit hard, causing significant delays in flights around the world.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)