Global IT Outage Spurs Cancellations of Thousands of Flights

Airlines worldwide reported disruptions on Friday.

Ryan Ewing

Friday, July 19, 2024 at 10:47 AM ET

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Edited By: tccjeremy

Aircraft on the move at New York’s LaGuardia Airport [Credit: AirlineGeeks | William Derrickson]

Key Takeaways:

A global IT issue has caused widespread flight disruptions, leading to nearly 2,700 flight cancellations worldwide, with over 1,000 in the U.S. alone.
The problem originated from a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which caused Microsoft Windows computers to crash across various sectors, including airlines, airports, and banks.
CrowdStrike has identified, isolated, and deployed a fix for the issue, clarifying that it is not a security incident or cyberattack, though the full resolution is still ongoing.

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An ongoing IT issue is plaguing airline operations across the globe on Friday. As of 8 a.m. EDT, there were nearly 2,700 canceled flights globally, according to data from aviation analytics company Cirium.

In the U.S., carriers have canceled 1,017 flights, or 4.2 percent of their planned schedule, so far. American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines say they have resumed some flights while Southwest Airlines has remained largely unaffected by the outage.