Thousands of flights have been canceled after a worldwide internet outage hit many leading airlines, forcing passengers to scramble to save their vacations and other trips
Air travelers became the face of the widespread technology outage Friday as they posted pictures on social media of crowds of people stranded at airports in Europe and the United States.
In the U.S., American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Spirit Airlines and Allegiant Air had all their flights grounded for varying lengths of time Friday morning. Airlines said the outage hit many systems, including those used to check in passengers and calculate aircraft weight — necessary information for planes to take off.
United and some other airlines issued waivers to let customers change travel plans. The overnight outage was blamed on a software update that cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike sent to Microsoft computers of its corporate customers, including many airlines.
By midday on the East Coast, more than 2,200 U.S. flights had been canceled and more than 6,000 others delayed, according to tracking platform FlightAware. Worldwide, more than 3,500 flights were canceled. Those numbers were certain to rise throughout the day.
CrowdStrike said it identified the problem and was fixing it, but that didn’t translate into clear skies Friday. Hundreds of thousands of travelers were stranded.
“This is going to have ripple effects for probably a few days at least,” said Jesse Neugarten, the founder and CEO of travel-search site Dollar Flight Club.
