Several airlines suspended flights on Friday, while others warned of delays and disruptions as an unprecedented IT outage disrupted operations worldwide.
Early Friday, cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike There was a serious disruption related to a technical update. Companies like Microsoft needed to rush to revive the apps and services utilized by numerous firms.
The so-called Blue Screen of Death was displayed on the flight update and check-in monitors of airports world wide, a sign of a Microsoft System error. Images shared on social media showed a Whiteboard with 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 real global blackout. … The outage affected not only individual users but mainly large institutions such as banks (including central banks), stock exchanges and airports. It brought operations to a standstill during the peak holiday season and caused chaos in many other sectors,” said Grzegorz Drozdz, market analyst at Conotoxia, in an emailed comment.
As of Friday, around 12 p.m. ET, there have been nearly 30,000 flight delays worldwide, including about 5,400 inside, to, or out of the United States, based on FlightAware Data. More than 3,200 flights were canceled, almost 2,000 of which were flights to the USA.
US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Friday on CNBC's “Squawk on the Street” that he expects transportation delays to level off and “return to normal” by Saturday.
“The problem has been identified. It's really about the kind of ripple or cascade effects as they get everything back to normal in their networks,” Buttigieg said. “These flights are happening so close together that even after the root cause is addressed, you can still feel those effects throughout the day.”
Airlines across Europe, the Middle East, North and South America and Asia released updates on the expected extent of the impact on their flight schedules and other services. Passengers were advised to envision the status of their flight.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said at 10:22 a.m. ET: “The FAA continues to work closely with airlines to resume normal operations. There will be temporary ground stops and delays at various airports as airlines resolve remaining technical issues.”
American Airlines said it had been in a position to “safely resume operations” as of 5 a.m. ET. The airline also said, “We expect impacts to our flight schedule today, including delays and cancellations.”
delta And United Both said they’d resumed some flights but expected delays and cancellations through Friday. All three airlines granted exemptions to permit their customers to vary their travel plans.
Colby Black, 45, took the delays in his stride, regardless that he wasn't sure when his rebooked flight to Los Angeles would take off.
“The board says 8 a.m., but on my app it says 9 a.m., so who knows,” he said of the flight that was originally scheduled to depart at 6 a.m. “I'm just tired. I want to sleep,” said Black, who woke up at 3 a.m. “But other than that, yeah, these things happen.”
In Europe, the Dutch airline KLM said The IT problems have been “almost completely resolved” and air traffic to and from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport could be “fully resumed” after most of KLM's flight operations were suspended within the morning.
However, the airline added that there had been quite a few delays or cancellations of flights and that disruptions would proceed throughout the evening and weekend, with further cancellations possible.
Partner airline of KLM Air France Late Friday afternoon, it was announced that operations were “back to normal across the entire network” after only a couple of flights to Amsterdam and Berlin had been affected throughout the day. However, delays couldn’t be ruled out.
Germany Lufthansa was only “slightly affected” by the worldwide cancellation, it said, with the best impact on routes to Berlin, Amsterdam and Zurich. The German low-cost airline Eurowings, which belongs to the identical group, said it planned to operate around 80 percent of its flights, with most cancellations occurring on domestic routes.
The Swiss air traffic control company Skyguide announced throughout the morning that it had reduced the capability of transit traffic to Switzerland by 30 percent as a precautionary measure after being affected by the disruption.
Busiest day for flights to the UK
British airlines British Airways and Virgin Atlantic each said some flight disruptions were expected on Friday.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium said Friday, July 19, can be the busiest day of the yr, with the very best variety of scheduled each day 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 experience problems and delays were expected. Gatwick said the issues affected “check-in systems and security at some airlines, including eGates”.
Self-check-in systems were temporarily out of service at quite a few airports on Friday, including Taiwan's Taoyuan International Airport, Singapore's Changi Airport and Hong Kong International Airport.
Airlines in mainland China corresponding to Air China and China Southern weren’t affected because they use a distinct system, Reuters reported, citing state media.
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