Global IT Outage Sparks Travel Chaos as 4,000+ Flights Canceled Worldwide

Airlines around the world are attempting to recover from a catastrophic global IT outage. Companies in the United States, UK, India, and Australia are among those badly affected. 

Earlier on Friday, Delta Air Lines “paused” all flights in its global network as it “worked through a vendor technology issue.” United Airlines was among the other big names to halt all departures, with problems “impacting [its] ability to access reservation tools” for rebooking passengers. The carrier has since restarted some services.

Elsewhere, Canada’s Porter Airlines cancelled all departures until 12pm ET, and Eurowings scrapped all domestic German and UK services until 3pm CET.

As of 12pm ET (4pm GMT), aviation analytics firm Cirium said 4,295 flights had been canceled globally on Friday, with thousands more delayed. This number is expected to rise throughout the day.

KLM said on X on Friday morning that the cyber challenges had made “flight handling impossible,” resulting in the Dutch national carrier “largely suspending operations.”

What Caused the Outages?

The root cause of the problem appears to be a software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. George Kurtz, the company’s CEO, said on X that “a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” was causing disruption to customers.

Kurtz added that the issue has since been “identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.” He said the outages were not caused by a security incident or cyber attack.

Even if the technical problem has been fixed, the knock-on impact to affected airlines and airports is likely to continue throughout the day, and could get worse before it gets better.

Earlier Microsoft said it was taking “mitigation actions” after service issues, according to the AFP news agency. Heathrow Airport was among the big name organizations to reference Microsoft in its statement on the issue. Microsoft said the outage started around 6pm ET (10pm GMT) on Thursday.

What Are Major Airports Saying?

Plane tracking service Flightradar24 reported severe delays affecting arrivals and departures at major airports around the world on Friday. Heathrow, Las Vegas, and Sydney are among the international hubs that faced serious problems.

Denver Airport confirmed “various airlines are impacted,” and said some of its parking lots were closed due to “ticket dispensing issues.”

Spanish airport operator Aena said that all of its locations are now operational, but warned that many airlines are rescheduling their flights for the remainder of Friday.

Edinburgh Airport in Scotland was among those asking passengers due to travel today not to come to the terminal without checking with their airline first. 

Meanwhile Ryanair advised all passengers to arrive at the airport at least three hours before departure as it “experiences disruption across its network.”

Airlines and airports are no stranger to IT problems. Online travel businesses are also vulnerable to shutdowns, with the Expedia Group’s global outage in May a recent high profile example. However, the depth and scale of the current difficulties that impacted the aviation sector on Friday is without recent precedent.

Indian Flights Hit Hard by IT Outage

All airlines in India have reported outages including Air India, Vistara, Indigo, Akasa Air, Air India Express and SpiceJet.

Carriers such as IndiGo, SpiceJet and Akasa had reported technical glitches impacting services like booking tickets and web check-in since 10:45am local time on Friday.

The Air India Group has asked guests to plan their travel accordingly and keep sufficient time in hand for airport procedures.

Akasa Air said on Friday that its online services like booking, check-in and manage booking services were temporarily unavailable. It was processing manual check-in and boarding processes at airports and requested passengers with immediate travel plans to reach the airport early.

Adani Airports, which operates airports in major cities across India said: “A global IT outage has affected operations, impacting flights nationwide. During this time, booking, check-in, access to boarding passes, and flights are likely to be affected…”

The Picture Across Asia-Pacific

Singapore’s Changi Airport said that the check-in process for some airlines is being managed manually. The airport said its ground staff is providing assistance to passengers, “especially those with an impending departure.”

Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific announced that self-service check-in facilities at Hong Kong International Airport were unavailable. Sydney Airport said departures and arrivals were continuing, but major delays should be expected, adding: “We have activated our contingency plans and deployed additional staff to our terminals.”

However, the chaos for passengers has not been universal. In a statement to Skift, a Dubai Airports spokesperson confirmed the hub is “operating normally” after disruption to check-in processes for some airlines at Terminals 1 and 2 in the morning.

“The affected airlines promptly switched to an alternate system, allowing normal check-in operations to resume swiftly,” the spokesperson said.

The aviation industry is not alone in facing technical problems on Friday. There are reports of outages and other IT failures at banks, hospitals, and other organizations around the world.