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, caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, has led to nearly 2,700 flight cancellations worldwide on Friday.
The problem, which makes computers running Microsoft Windows crash, has impacted major airlines in the U.S. (e.g., American, Delta, United) and internationally, though Southwest Airlines remains largely unaffected.
CrowdStrike has identified, isolated, and deployed a fix for the issue, which also affected other institutions like banks and media companies, but the situation's full resolution is still unfolding.

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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.