One Software Update, a Global Airline Meltdown

The real-life Y2K. “Blue Screen of Death.” The IT outage that has affected everything from Times Square billboards to payrolls has also led to a worldwide meltdown in the airline industry. 

As of Friday afternoon there were over 7,000 delays and around 2,400 cancellations in the U.S., according to flight tracking site FlightAware. Globally, the outage has caused nearly 4,000 cancellations, and nearly 34,000 delays, according to the latest data from Cirium. 

Even as businesses slowly begin to recover from the massive outage, the number of flight disruptions is only expected to grow for the next few days. 

The outage was traced to Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm that a range of industries depend on for protection against hackers and data breaches. A software update the firm issued led to crashes in systems that use Microsoft Windows’ operating syst