Global IT outage: Airlines, businesses affected by CrowdStrike, Microsoft issues

TUSTIN, Calif. — Ports in Southern California and the John Wayne Airport in Orange County saw some disruptions from the internet outage but still were operating.

At John Wayne Airport in Orange County, there were a dozen reported cancellations and at least 40 delays, but flights were taking off Friday morning, said AnnaSophia Servin, an airport spokesperson. The airport averages about 260 arrivals and departures each day.

“We’re processing passengers, but airlines are dealing with effects to flights and flight schedules,” Servin said.

At the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, marine terminals were affected but the outage didn’t cause significant disruption.

Mario Cordero, chief executive of the Port of Long Beach, said four marine terminals experienced computer issues but resolved them with minimal disruption. One of the Port of Los Angeles’ seven terminals had limited operations overnight, said spokesperson Phillip Sanfield.

“Basically, it’s been minimal impact overnight and we’re going to have to wait and see how these terminals come up over the next several hours,” Sanfield said.

Orange County Superior Court reported technical issues and Cedars-Sinai, a hospital in Los Angeles, was also dealing with it.

ALBANY, N.Y. — The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles says the internet outage was preventing it from processing transactions online and in its offices Friday morning.

By Friday afternoon, the agency said some systems had been restored and that it could begin performing online transactions. However, some in-person services were still offline.

At least three of its DMV offices closed for the day because of the outage, according to the agency’s website.

SAN FRANCISCO — The head of a nonprofit group that promotes building the internet says outages like the major one affecting Microsoft and causing problems across the globe will happen in the future because of “our world of complex, interconnected systems.”

“The important part is how we learn from them and how we improve the resilience of our systems, so that similar issues do not happen again,” Andrew Sullivan, CEO of the nonprofit Internet Society said Friday.

The outages disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies across the world, but Sulivan said there was no loss of connectivity and data continued to flow.

“This was a failure of some systems using a specific operating system and a specific vendor’s management tools,” he said. “Unfortunately, those systems were used widely and for many functions critical to people’s daily lives.”

The Federal Aviation Administration lifted the ground stop orders for Delta and United airlines just before noon.

JetBlue said in a statement that its operations remain normal, and that it is not experiencing any systemwide delays or cancellations.

United Airlines said earlier that the outage was affecting its computer systems and warned customers of potential flight delays. The carrier said some flights are resuming and it is issuing waivers to make it easier to change travel plans within its website.

In Los Angeles, the Cedars-Sinai Health System remained open and continued to provide care. Spokesperson Christina Elston said the system was affected by the outage but that they were working to address the issue and limit its impact.

Harris Health System, which runs public hospitals and clinics in the Houston area, said it had to suspend hospital visits “until further notice” due to the outage. Elective hospital procedures were being canceled and rescheduled. Clinic appointments were initially impacted, but in a post later on X, the health system said that its health centers were now open for such appointments.

A spokesperson for the Cleveland Clinic said patient care has not been affected by the outage, but it was affecting some technology the clinic uses. She said the health system is providing care at all locations.

A spokesperson for HCA Healthcare said the health system didn’t expect the technology issue to affect its ability to provide care. Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA runs 188 hospitals and about 2,400 care sites around the country.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center said it was pausing the start of any procedures that require anesthesia. The New York-based care provider said it was dealing with systems issues related to the technology disruption.

Some billboards in New York City’s famous Times Square went dark during the global tech outage.

Local media outlets and social media users shared images of the massive electronic screens switched off entirely and black early Friday morning.

Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, said a “handful” of the more than 100 billboards crammed in the square remain offline around noon Friday.

“We’re almost back to business as usual,” he said. He added that it’s not clear whether all the blackouts were related to the global tech outage or part of regularly scheduled maintenance or other issues as the billboards are independently owned and operated.

Alison Baulos, the executive director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago, said her 73-year-old father’s emergency open heart surgery was cancelled Friday morning due to the global tech outage, leaving her family scared and worried.

“It’s an emergency surgery so if anything happens, it would be as a result of not having the surgery this morning,” Baulos told The Associated Press.

Her father was waiting at Baptist Hospital in Paducah, Kentucky to find out what will happen next, she said.

Her father was expecting surgery after he received a call from his doctor on Wednesday saying he had eight blockages and an aneurysm. But the family was told the operation had to be postponed due to the outage.

“It does really make you just realize how much we rely on technology and how scary it is,” she said.

A phone message left with the spokesperson at Baptist Hospital seeking comment was not immediately returned.

In Texas, Harris Health System, which runs public hospitals and clinics in the Houston area, said it had to suspend hospital visits “until further notice” on Friday due to the outage.

Elective hospital procedures on Friday were being canceled and rescheduled. Clinic appointments were initially impacted, but they returned to normal later Friday.

“Some services may not be available due to the current CrowdStrike incident. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through this disruption,” the health system said.

In the state of Georgia, the Department of Driver Services said its computer systems were down at more than 60 offices statewide. The department was still giving road tests, but wasn’t issuing licenses to people who passed.

The Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transit Authority said problems had caused service reductions on its rail system earlier in the morning, but that full rail service had been restored.

However, the system’s website, service information systems and online ticket sales remained disrupted.

In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams stressed there was no impact to critical infrastructure or emergency operations in the United States’ largest city, including the 911 system.

“There are no calls being held or missed. There is no backlog,” Adams said.

Transit officials also said train and bus service was unaffected, even as travel woes mounted at the city’s busy airports.

Maryland’s Judiciary has announced that all Maryland courts, offices and facilities will be closed to the public on Friday because of the Microsoft outage, but will remain open for emergency matters.

“Due to the worldwide Microsoft outage, all Maryland courts, offices, and facilities will be closed to the public today but will remain open for emergency matters,” the judiciary said in a news release. “All clerks’ offices are closed.”

The Maryland Department of Emergency Management announced Friday that it was increasing the state activation level from “normal” to “partial,” meaning there’s an event that requires significant monitoring or resources. The agency is also activating its emergency operations center.

Bradesco, one of the main banks in Brazil, notified its users via its app that digital services were unstable because of a global cyber outage, but its ATMs were working normally. Bradesco has more than 100 million clients.

Azul Airlines, a Brazilian low-cost airline, said that its check-in systems were affected, causing occasional flight delays. The company recommended that customers arrive at the airport earlier.

The National Civil Aviation Agency of Brazil said that it’s monitoring the impacts on airports, but so far there haven’t been major delays.

The Boston-based health system Mass General Brigham said on its website that it was canceling all nonurgent care visits because of the outage, but its emergency rooms remain open.

The company said on its website that it can’t gain access to its clinical systems, including patient health records and scheduling.

It asked patients not to call to reschedule and said a care team member would reach out to them instead.

By late morning on the East Coast, about 1,500 U.S. flights had been canceled and nearly 4,000 delayed — numbers that were sure to grow throughout the day — according to FlightAware.

Delta canceled nearly 500 flights, American canceled 300 and United more than 200, and those numbers don’t include flights on their regional affiliates.

A spokesman for health care company CVS Health Corp. said Friday morning that its drugstores and pharmacies were operating normally.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies,” CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on NBC’s “Today Show” Friday. “We know what the issue is” and are working to remediate it.

He said the system was sent an update and the update had a bug in it causing a problem to Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

“It was only the Microsoft operating system” that was affected, though it didn’t happen on every Microsoft Windows system, he said.

The global computer outage likely will have little impact on the world economy, according to forecasting firm Capital Economics, particularly because it hasn’t disrupted financial markets.

“While things are still very uncertain, we do not anticipate a major macroeconomic or financial market impact at this stage,” Jennifer McKeown, chief global economist at Capital Economics, said in a written comment. “It is encouraging from an economic standpoint that there has been little financial disturbance so far.”

The firm estimated in late 2022 that even a cyberattack that lasted several days would only shave global economic growth by about 0.2%.

“Given that this is not a cyberattack and has not affected all software by any stretch, the implications should be significantly smaller,” McKeown said.

Richard Stiennon, a cybersecurity industry analyst, said that this was a historic mistake by CrowdStrike.

“This is easily the worst faux pas, technical faux pas or glitch of any security software provider ever,” said Stiennon, who has tracked the cybersecurity industry for 24 years.

He said while the problem is an easy technical fix, it’s impact could be long lasting.

“It’s really, really difficult to touch millions of machines. And people are on vacation right now, so, you know, the CEO will be coming back from his trip to the Bahamas in a couple of weeks and he won’t be able to use his computers.”

In Michigan, Genesee County, which includes Flint, closed nonessential county government operations for the day.

In Panama, Copa Airlines was recommending that travelers arrive to the capital’s Tocumen International Airport at least three hours before their scheduled flights because some procedures were being carried out manually, delaying check-in.

The airline, however, said that it didn’t expect cancellations.

The company that runs South Africa’s airports, which include some of the busiest on the African continent, says they have been unaffected by the global network outage.

Airports Company South Africa says it doesn’t use CrowdStrike services and operations are running as normal.

The global outage has prevented several TV stations in the U.S. from airing local news early Friday.

KSHB-TV in Kansas City, Missouri, aired national news network Scripps News instead of local news until about 5:35 a.m., the stations said on its website. IT teams and engineers worked through the night to resolve the glitch, the station said.

Other local stations owned by Scripps and other companies reported similar problems.

Scripps spokesman Michael Perry said in an email that as of 8 a.m. EDT, 90% of stations were able to air local news.

Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, western Japan, has said that the global system outage will continue to affect ticket sales at the attraction over the weekend.

The park said its ticket booth sales will not be available Saturday and Sunday, and asked visitors to purchase their tickets on its official website or via a designated ticket sales site.

Park attractions are not affected.

General Motors has reported that it had some minor production interruptions at some factories because supply companies had trouble delivering parts due to the outage.

Many factories rely on “just-in-time” deliveries. Spokesman Kevin Kelly said no production shifts were changed.

“It wasn’t anything significant,” he said.

Microsoft spokesperson Frank X. Shaw has confirmed that “a Crowdstrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of Windows systems globally.”

“We are actively supporting customers to assist in their recovery,” he said in an emailed statement Friday.

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the CrowdStrike outage and his team has been in touch with CrowdStrike and impacted entities, according to the White House.

Biden is getting continued updates throughout the day and the administration is “standing by to provide assistance as needed,” the White House said.

At the Narita International Airport near Tokyo, passengers of low-cost carrier Jetstar Japan formed long lines waiting at the airline’s departure counter, where boarding had to be processed manually due to a system failure.

Jetstar Japan said it has canceled 28 flights, most of them domestic, due to a software problem that stalled the airline’s boarding procedures at airports across the country including Narita.

The airline apologized for the inconveniences and said it was doing utmost to restore the system as soon as possible.

In Canada, the tech outage grounded some flights, disrupted hospitals and backed up border crossings on Friday.

Porter Airlines said it is cancelling its flights until 12 p.m. ET due to the outage. Air Canada, Canada’s largest airline, said there is no major impact to its operations.

University Health Network, one of Canada’s largest hospital networks, said some of its systems had been impacted and some patients may experience delays.

Windsor Police reported long delays at both the Canada-United States border crossings at the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor tunnel.

Janice Bruce of St. Joseph, Missouri, was among many waiting for flights at Kansas City International Airport. Bruce was headed on a mission trip to Mexico with members of her Baptist church, but their flight to Houston was delayed.

The group said they were counting on the connection being delayed, too. Group members passed the time getting food and coffee, talking and sleeping.

“No use getting upset. It’s not anything we can control,” she said.

Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company at the heart of the global outage, was founded in 2012 by George Kurtz, Dmitri Alerovitch and Gregg Marston, according to its website. It says it is the most advanced cloud-based security technology provider.

Kurtz, its CEO, said in a note on the site that “Our team of visionaries are the rebels who believe the current state of security is fundamentally broken and want to do something about it.”

CrowdStrike listed on the Nasdaq exchange five years ago. It reported last month that its revenue rose 33% in the last quarter from the previous quarter and that logged a net profit of $42.8 million, up from $491,000 in the first quarter of this year.

The company has a partnership with Amazon Web Services and its Falcon for Defender is designed to supplement Microsoft Defender to prevent attacks.

The firm said Friday’s global disruptions occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows. The issue was not a security incident or cyberattack, and a fix was on the way, it said.

Officials in some U.S. states, including Alaska, Virginia and Iowa, warned of 911 problems in their areas.

Alaska State Troopers warned that many 911 and non-emergency call centers across the state were not working correctly and shared alternate numbers for areas where 911 wasn’t working.

In Virginia, the City of Fairfax Police Department said on social media that it was experiencing technical difficulties with its phone systems, including 911. The department shared a non-emergency number for callers and said 911 could still be used, but calls would not go directly to the dispatch center.

The New Hampshire Emergency Services and Communications reported a temporary interruption early Friday. Around 1 am., New Hampshire 911 telecommunicators reported not being able to answer incoming 911 calls that they could see on their computer systems, the agency said in a news release. Calls that couldn’t be answered were returned to make sure people got the help they needed. By 3:30 a.m., calls and texts to 911 were being received on a backup system and the system has been fully restored, officials said.

In Iowa, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office warned on social media that phone lines were down. The department said that 911 calls might be routed to neighboring counties, but emergency calls would be promptly redirected to the sheriff’s office.

More than 300 flights were delayed and more than 100 flights were cancelled so far on Friday at the three major airports in the New York city area — JFK, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty in New Jersey, according to airline tracker Flight Aware.

The city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority said regional train and bus service hasn’t been affected but advised travelers not to head to the airport unless their flight status is confirmed.

In South Africa, at least two major banks said they experienced service disruptions as customers complained they weren’t able to make payments using their bank cards at grocery stores and gas stations or use ATMs.

Both banks said they were able to restore services hours later.

Southern African regional airline Airlink also reported that its IT network and telephone lines were down because of what it called a global network outage, but said flights were not affected.

A look at some of the disruptions affecting airlines and airports around the world:

Germany: Eurowings says it had to cancel German domestic flights as well as services to and from the U.K. on Friday. The budget subsidiary of Lufthansa said that its check-in and boarding processes were impaired by the computer disruption. The airline called on people traveling inside Germany to book a train ticket and submit it for reimbursement.

South Korea: Several low-cost airlines reported problems, triggering delays in passenger boardings at Incheon international Airport, the country’s biggest airport. Jeju Air Co. said it was experiencing problems with ticketing and other services on its website. Air Premia Inc. said key services on its website, such as ticket bookings, cancellations and online check-ins, were not working. The website of Eastar Jet Co. wasn’t accessible as of early Friday evening.

U.S.: United Airlines said the outage was impacting its computer systems and warned customers of potential flight delays. The carrier said some flights are resuming and it is issuing waivers to make it easier to change travel plans within its website.

The London Stock Exchange says it is experiencing disruptions from the technology outage that has created chaos around the globe.

The LSE says its regulatory news service was not working Friday morning but the outage had not affected trading.

“We are currently experiencing a third party technical issue which is impacting some of our services,” a London Stock Exchange Group spokesperson said in a statement.

The exchange says it’s trying to resolve the problem as soon as possible.

Nasdaq said Friday: “Our European markets and U.S. pre-market are operating normally. We expect our U.S. markets to open normally.”

The automated border control system at Bangkok’s two airports have been affected by the tech outage, according to
Kerati Kijmanawat, president of Thailand’s airport authorities.

The ground operation of several airlines at six major Thai airports has also been disrupted, he added. He encouraged passengers to come to the airports at least 4 hours before their departure time.

Airports in Singapore and Malaysia were also reporting similar issues, with long queues and passengers worried about missing their flights due to the long check-in process.

Singapore Post also reported technical disruptions to its services, as did Malaysia’s railway company KTM.

At Hong Kong’s airport, hundreds of travellers were queuing for manual check-in around the counters of budget airline HK Express, which said that its global e-commerce system was affected by Microsoft’s service outage.

Hospital clerk Timmy Lo, 29, said that he and his girlfriend had been in the queue for more than two hours waiting to check in for their flight. The delay meant they could only arrive at their hotel in Tokyo in the early hours of Saturday amid infrequent public transportation services.

“I am very tired because I have to stand in line all the time, and we don’t know when we can get in,” he said.

A cyber security expert said internet outages will cause real harm as hospitals and other essential services are disrupted.

“There are going to be deaths because of this. It’s inevitable,’’ said James Bore, the managing director of cyber security consulting company Bores.

“We’ve got so many systems tied up with this. We’ve got emergency services. There are going to be excess deaths. People will die who wouldn’t have otherwise. And we’re not talking millions, but it is going to hurt people. And there are really serious consequences. That’s without getting into anything financial, which is of less importance. This is going to cause harm.”

Some Olympic delegations’ arrivals have been delayed because of the outage, as well as delivery of uniforms and accreditations, Paris Olympics organizers said in a statement.

It has not affected ticketing or the torch relay. ”Our teams have been fully mobilized to ensure the continuity of operations at optimum levels,’’ it said.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the company was working to fix problems created for Windows users of its tools by a recent update in a post on the social media platform X.

Britain’s National Health Service says a global internet outage is causing problems at most doctors’ offices across England.

NHS England said in a statement said the glitch was hitting the appointment and patient record system used across the public health system. The state-funded NHS treats the vast majority of people in the U.K.

The NHS said the issue was affecting the majority of family doctors’ practices, but was not the 999 number used to call for ambulances in emergencies.

Baltic Hub, a major container hub in the Baltic port of Gdansk, Poland, says it is battling problems resulting from the global system outage.

The hub’s entry gates were temporarily closed on Friday morning and they suspended business.

With athletes and spectators arriving from around the world for the Paris Olympics, the Paris airport authority said its computer systems “are not impacted” by the global outage, but several airlines and airports elsewhere are.

As a result, “this situation has an impact on the operations of airlines at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly airports: delays in check-in, delays and temporary suspension of some flights. Our teams are mobilized to orient and assist passengers,” the airport authority said in a statement Friday.

The U.K. television station Sky News began broadcasting again after the outage knocked it off the air during the morning.

The news anchor referred to printed notes after getting back on the air.

Sky News was able to deliver news on its app and website during the broadcast outage.

One possible cause of the internet issues plaguing airlines, companies and governments around the world is a tool developed by the online security firm CrowdStrike.

Israel’s Cyber Directorate was among the groups attributing the issues to CrowdStrike.

A recording playing on CrowdStrike’s customer service line said, “CrowdStrike is aware of the reports of crashes on Microsoft ports related to the Falcon sensor,” it said, referring to one of its products used to block online attacks. It said callers should monitor its customer support portal.

Escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.

The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta.

News outlets in Australia reported that airlines, telecommunications providers and banks, and media broadcasters were disrupted as they lost access to computer systems. Some New Zealand banks said they were also offline.

Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

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