The CrowdStrike outage that hit early Friday morning and knocked out computers running Microsoft Windows has grounded flights globally.
Major U.S. airlines including United, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines have halted flight operations around the world. According to FlightAware, which is tracking the cancellations live, 7% of United Airlines flights, 8% of American Airlines flights, and 12% of Delta flights have been canceled. By comparison, the airlines had canceled on Thursday 3%, 4% and 1%, respectively.
FlightAware’s tracker also shows that, as of 11 a.m. ET, nearly 3,000 flights have been canceled today, with total flight delays hitting nearly 28,000. Although not all of those cancellations and delays will be linked to the CrowdStrike outage.
Frontier Airlines, an American ultra low-cost carrier, was also affected, but appears to have resumed, or is in the process of resuming, normal flight operations. Spirit Airlines, another budget airline, said the outage is impacting its reservations system and flight operations.
“Due to the outage, we are currently unable to rebook Guests whose travel plans have been disrupted. We will assist these Guests as soon as possible when our vendor restores service,” Spirit posted on Facebook.
Globally, airlines like Qantas, Air France, Ryanair, Air Asia, Air India and others have also experienced communications issues as a result of the CrowdStrike outage.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center posted that all United Airlines flights regardless of destination and subs have been grounded due to a communication issue.
The FAA posted on X and Facebook that it is closely monitoring the issue, and that several airlines have requested assistance with ground stops until the issue is resolved. A ground stop is an air traffic control measure that slows or halts the flow of an aircraft coming into a given airport.
“We continue to work closely with airlines as they work to resume normal operations,” wrote the FAA. “Ground stops and delays will be intermittent at various airports as the airlines work through residual technology issues. Contact the airlines for more information.”
According to the FAA’s website, airports like Boston Logan Airport, Harry Reid Airport in Las Vegas, Milwaukee Mitchell International, Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport , STS and LaGuardia Airport in New York have closed to “non-scheduled transient general aviation aircraft, or flights that aren’t a part of a regular schedule (like charter or private flights) and aircraft that are just passing through and not based at the airport.
Airports including Atlanta International, Detroit Metropolitan, Minneapolis Saint-Paul, Salt Lake City and Henry E. Rohlsen Airport in Saint Croix are experiencing ground delays due to unspecified reasons that could very well be linked to the CrowdStrike outage.
United Airlines posted on its website that flights going in and out of the following airports today have been affected: Cleveland, OH (CLE); Newark, NJ (EWR); Frankfurt, Germany (FRA); Guam (GUM); Honolulu, HI (HNL); Washington, D.C. (IAD); Houston, TX (IAH); Los Angeles, CA (LAX); London, Great Britain (LHR); Orlando, FL (MCO); Chicago, IL (ORD); San Francisco, CA (SFO).
United posted on X at around 9 a.m. ET that it is resuming some flights, but schedule disruptions may continue. The airline has issued a special waiver to help customers change their travel plans.
American Airlines also confirmed that “a technical issue with a vendor impacted multiple carriers, including American. The airline said as of 5 a.m. ET it has been able to “safely re-establish our operation.” However, current social media posts still show customers whose flights are canceled or continue to be delayed.
As of 7:49 a.m. ET, Delta said that it has also resumed some flight departures, but that additional delays and cancellations are expected Friday. Delta said it would waive the difference in fares for customers who booked flights departing Friday.
According to a ground delay alert from the FAA, Delta flights departing for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport are seeing an average delay of 374 minutes at the time of this writing. The delay affects departures from 30 airlines across the U.S. and Canada.
Citi analyst Stephen Trent said that because the outage wasn’t the fault of the airlines themselves, he doesn’t believe there will be penalties for flight cancellations.
“Today’s disruption should not have a material earnings impact as long as significant improvements continue throughout the day,” Trent said.
Trains largely unaffected by CrowdStrike outage
Most trains appear to be unaffected by the outage, including Amtrak, but some apps for managing train times are down. The New York City public transit system, the MTA, is still running, but the MTA app that shows subway and bus scheduling and route planning is down.
Washington, D.C.’s Metro public transit system, however, was affected by the outage. As of 5:45 am ET, the service said that all Metrorail stations opened on time and service is running as scheduled. Buses are also operating as scheduled.
Auto industry mildly affected
The outage has affected businesses around the world, including retailers, brokerage houses, media companies and more.
Automakers GM and Ford told TechCrunch their manufacturing operations were not affected by the outage and that their consumer-facing apps, which owners use to unlock and lock their vehicles and control other information, are working as normal. Onstar, the GM subsidiary that handles in-vehicle communications including emergency services, is also working as normal.
CrowdStrike’s CEO, George Kurtz, confirmed that a defect in a software update for Windows hosts caused the outage. He ruled out a cyberattack, adding that the firm was rolling out a fix and that Mac and Linux hosts were not affected.
This story is developing. Check back in for updates.
