Airlines gradually returned online Saturday after a major IT crash caused turmoil for global carriers, banks, and financial institutions. The disruption, one of the biggest in recent years, stemmed from an update to an antivirus program.
Passenger crowds swelled at airports on Friday as dozens of flights were canceled, with operators struggling to maintain services. An update to a program operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide, leaving many passengers stranded.
Multiple US airlines and airports across Asia announced they were resuming operations. Check-in services were restored in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Thailand, and mostly returned to normal in India, Indonesia, and at Singapore’s Changi Airport by Saturday afternoon. “The check-in systems have come back to normal (at Thailand’s five major airports). There are no long queues at the airports as we experienced yesterday,” said Airports of Thailand president Keerati Kitmanawat at Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok.
Microsoft reported that the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity software. CrowdStrike rolled out a fix for the problem, with CEO George Kurtz apologizing to all affected.
The White House stated that US President Joe Biden’s team was in contact with CrowdStrike and those affected, offering assistance as needed. A senior US administration official confirmed that flight operations had resumed nationwide, although some congestion remained.
Reports indicated that health services in the Netherlands and Britain might have been affected, suggesting the full impact of the disruption was not yet known. Media companies also faced issues, with Britain’s Sky News and Australia’s ABC experiencing significant difficulties.
By Saturday, most services in Australia had returned to normal, but Sydney Airport was still reporting flight delays. Australian authorities warned of an increase in scam and phishing attempts following the outage.
Banks in Kenya and Ukraine, along with some mobile phone carriers and customer service operations, reported disruptions. Junade Ali of Britain’s Institution of Engineering and Technology described the scale of the outage as unprecedented, comparable only to a 2017 incident.
While some airports halted all flights, others resorted to manual check-ins, leading to long lines and frustrated travelers. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initially grounded all flights, though airlines later resumed services and worked through the backlog.
India’s largest airline, Indigo, confirmed that operations had been resolved. Low-cost carrier AirAsia continued to work on recovering its departure control systems (DCS), advising passengers to arrive early for manual check-ins.
Chinese state media reported that Beijing’s airports were unaffected, while major European airports like Berlin resumed departures and arrivals.
CrowdStrike’s Kurtz stated that his teams were fully mobilized to assist affected customers and that a fix had been deployed. However, experts like Professor Oli Buckley of Loughborough University questioned the practicality of widespread implementation.
Other experts called for a reconsideration of societal reliance on a handful of tech companies for critical services. Professor John McDermid of York University emphasized the need for infrastructure to be resilient against common cause problems, highlighting the incident as a wake-up call for future preparedness.
