Several major U.S. airlines — including American Airlines, United, and Delta — grounded flights early Friday due to a technical issue impacting IT systems, as mass outages disrupted airports, banks, health care providers, broadcasters, and businesses around the world.
Some 911 call centers, as well as IT services of the Paris Olympics, were also affected.
Microsoft said it was aware of an issue affecting Windows programs running cybersecurity technology from CrowdStrike.
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” said George Kurtz, co-founder and CEO of CrowdStrike Inc., as some services appeared to be resuming and American Airlines said it was able to “safely re-establish” operations.
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” Kurtz wrote on social media early Friday.
Businesses around the world reported experiencing issues with Microsoft Windows overnight Thursday into Friday, with users reporting “blue screen of death” (BSOD) errors. At least some resumed functioning shortly afterward.
American Airlines said “a technical issue with CrowdStrike” had affected “multiple carriers,” causing it to ground all departing flights.
Banks and telecom companies in Australia and New Zealand have also been affected, while Israel’s hospitals and health services are facing a computer “malfunction,” authorities there said.
The issue has impacted everyone from banks to airlines, with flights grounded, grocery carts abandoned, and productivity even lower than usual for a Friday.
CrowdStrike has since announced at 2:30 a.m. ET that it has identified the update causing the issue and rolled it back.
The company also offered a workaround for anyone having problems:
- “Boot Windows into Safe Mode or the Windows Recovery Environment
- “Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike directory
- “Locate the file matching ‘C-0000029*.sys’, and delete it.
- “Boot the host normally.”
Of course, having to do this for every single computer in multiple companies across the globe is still likely to take some time.
“Every IT worker walking into work this Friday knowing that the global Crowdstrike BSOD global IT meltdown means they’ll have to cancel all weekend plans and work non-stop for the next 72 hours,” said Trung Phan, a prominent artificial intelligence (AI) businessman and writer.
In a social media post at 6:46 a.m. Friday, Microsoft said that “the underlying cause has been fixed, however, residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services.”
In a longer service update online, the company noted “this issue may be impacting any user attempting to use various Microsoft 365 apps and services” and said it was “continuing to treat this event with the highest possible priority.”
About 110,000 flights were scheduled to operate globally Friday, and roughly 1,390 had been canceled, though the numbers appeared to be growing, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines.
Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops until the issue is resolved and travelers may get specific information at fly.faa.gov.
The Air Traffic Control System Command Center said flight departures to Newark International are delayed an average of 48 minutes due to the computer glitch.
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