Global IT Outrages: Travel grapples with with tech ‘disaster’ as flights grounded

An update to a product offered by global cyberscurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), opens new tab appeared to be the trigger, affecting customers using Microsoft’s (MSFT.O).

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on social media platform X that the company was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts” and that a fix was being deployed.”This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” Kurtz said in the post.

Early on Friday, major U.S. airlines – American Airlines (AAL.O), opens new tab, Delta Airlines (DAL.N), opens new tab and United Airlines (UAL.O), opens new tab – grounded flights, while other carriers and airports around the world reported delays and disruptions.

Banks and financial services companies from Australia to India and Germany warned customers of disruptions and traders across markets spoke of problems with executing transaction.

“This is a a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core Internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, Professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and former head of the UK National Cyber Security Centre.

The outages rippled far and wide.

Airports in Singapore, Hong Kong and India said the outage meant some airlines were having to check in passengers manually.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of Europe’s busiest, said it was affected, while airline Iberia said it had been operating manually at airports until its electronic check-in counters and online check-ins were reactivated. It said there had been some delays but no flight cancellations.

Air France-KLM (AIRF.PA), opens new tab said its operations were disrupted.

The Dutch foreign affairs ministry told Dutch press agency ANP it had been affected. A spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

While there were reports of companies gradually restoring their services, analysts weighed the potential of what one called the biggest ever outage in the industry and the broader economy.

“IT security tools are all designed to ensure that companies can continue to operate in the worst-case scenario of a data breach, so to be the root cause of a global IT outage is an unmitigated disaster,” said Ajay Unni, CEO of StickmanCyber, one of Australia’s largest cybersecurity services companies.