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

Image from StratNews Global

A software update wrought havoc on computer systems globally on today evening, grounding flights, forcing some broadcasters off air and hitting services from banking to healthcare.

An update to a product offered by global cyberscurity firm CrowdStrike appeared to be the trigger, affecting customers using Microsoft operating platforms.

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.

Bricked and grounded

Early on Friday, major US carriers American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines grounded their respective 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 also said its operations were disrupted.

Meanwhile, the Dutch foreign affairs ministry informed press agency ANP that its own operations were also affected. At the time of this report, 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.

Source: Reuters

According to FlightAware’s most recent report, China’s Shenzen Bao’an, Amsterdam Schiphol in the Netherlands, and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta suffered the most in terms of delays and cancellations due to the IT outage.

Thousands grounded as airports go manual

The ongoing outage has already impacted thousands of passengers throughout Asia. As reported, systems running self-check-in kiosks in India, Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan have crashed, forcing airport and immigration personnel to resort to manual procedures.

In the Philippines, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAAP)announced in a statement released earlier this evening that it began initiating irregular operations protocols in close coordination with affected airlines, the Aviation Security Group of the Philippine National Police (PNP), and the Office for Transportation Security.

A CAAP spokesperson said: “Additionally, personnel are adding more seating for passengers, personnel at the help desks, and medical teams are on standby in the departure areas [of affected airports.]”

As of 7:00pm Manila time, congestion caused by crowds of passengers flocking to check-in counters was already seen at Terminal 3 of Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) and at Davao International Airport. Interestingly, hardly any issues were reported at NAIA 1 which mostly caters to foreign airlines and NAIA 2 which is the home port for national flag carrier Philippine Airlines.

Low-cost carriers Cebu Pacific and AirAsia were the hardest hit by the outage, with the former cancelling the remaining 18 flights scheduled for 19 July and two international flights slated for 20 July. The flight cancellations were posted to Cebu Pacific’s official Facebook account early this evening.

In a statement posted to AirAsia Philippines’ official Facebook account at 4:33pm in Manila, the airline’s head of communications and public affairs Steve Dailisan explained how the outage caused unexpected rebooting of machines, leading to some operational disruptions related to check-in processes and navigating the AirAsia MOVE app.

Dailisan was quick to assure passengers that the airline was doing what it could under the circumstances, saying: “[We are] closely monitoring the situation and are in constant communication with Navitaire and Microsoft. Our top priority is to minimise any impact on our guests and ensure that all systems are restored to full functionality as soon as possible.”