Thousands of delayed and cancelled flights piled up on Friday (Jul 19) as airlines slowly resumed flying after a widespread global software meltdown, with disruptions set to cascade through the weekend.
Carriers such as United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines have resumed operations and issued travel waivers to help customers rebook trips. The US Transportation Department’s top official admonished airlines to compensate customers for lengthy delays stemming from the disruptions, which the department said were within carriers’ control.
More than 5,000 flights had been cancelled globally as at 3.30 pm in New York, 4.6 per cent of all scheduled departures, according to aviation analytics provider Cirium. About 2,400 flights were scrapped in the US, according to Cirium. Delta alone said it cancelled more than 1,200 mainline and regional flights.
A botched software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike crashed Microsoft Windows computer systems around the world, hobbling businesses and critical infrastructure ranging from banks to hospitals. Airlines and airports were affected globally, a scope unprecedented for an industry more accustomed to technology mishaps interrupting operations at specific carriers or countries.
Cirium warned the situation could worsen and potentially rival the December 2022 meltdown that saw 5,300 cancellations on a single day as winter storms crippled air travel. The US Federal Aviation Administration said the IT issue could continue to affect flights through the weekend.
Hubs from Berlin, Amsterdam to Atlanta and Delhi International Airport bore the brunt of stranded passengers just as they prepared to jet off on their summer vacation. At Newark airport in New Jersey, one of the busiest in the world, a woman in tears sat at the United gate for her cancelled flight to Phoenix.
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“No one is giving any information. I don’t even know what to do,” said Bari Nochimson, 28, who was on her way to her bachelorette party with four other women, ahead of her September wedding. “We paid for these tickets months ago,” said Nochimson, who was wearing a t-shirt that read “Mom is getting married.”
While systems typically tend to reboot swiftly, resuming normal service can take several days because aircraft and crews will be out of position. Cancelled long-haul flights, in particular, will have ripple effects for days, coming at the peak of the summer travel season, when many planes are already full.
A number of separate systems were affected at United Airlines, including those used to calculate aircraft weight, handle passenger check-ins and control customer call center phones.
“We know this has been a difficult day for airline customers and we appreciate their patience as we work to safely restore our on-time operation as quickly as possible,” the carrier said.
The disruptions could prove costly. US Transportation Department officials said delays linked to the outage are considered to be “controllable” under US rules. That means airlines are required to pay for things such as meal vouchers, bookings on another airline and hotel accommodations. Customers are also entitled to a full cash refund if they decline an alternative flight offered after the delay, though they must request the payment.
“As with any mechanical or technical failure, airlines are required in this case to take care of passengers experiencing long delays or cancellations,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a post on X Friday afternoon.
Several airlines had already begun to smooth things over with customers. United said it issued a waiver to make it easier to change travel plans. Delta is contacting passengers with rebooking options and providing meal vouchers and hotel accommodations. The Atlanta-based carrier said its mobile app and website were being inundated with traffic, causing intermittent problems.
American Airlines has recovered and expects to “deliver a reliable operation” on Saturday, the carrier said. It has been issuing hotel, ground transportation and meal vouchers to eligible customers.
The aviation industry has seen its share of technology-linked disruptions, though they are typically more isolated. Last August, UK airspace suffered the worst air-traffic glitch in a decade, leading to hundreds of delays and cancellations on one of the busiest days in the travel season.
Friday’s disruption also recalled an FAA system outage in early 2023 that briefly grounded planes in the US. That issue, which led to thousands of flight delays and cancellations, was traced to a damaged file that affected the issuance of critical flight advisories.
The latest meltdown is affecting airlines differently. For some, it restricted the ability of network operations centres from communicating with stations and airports, while for others, passengers were either unable to access booking systems or online check-in services. With systems down, some airlines were being forced to manually check in passengers at airports, causing long queues and delays.
The communications outages extended into aircraft cockpits, with United Airlines experiencing intermittent issues with tools that it uses to message pilots, the FAA said in an advisory.
Others were largely spared from disruption. JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines and Alaska Air said they were not directly affected by the outage.
KLM said the situation had been “almost completely resolved” as at 4.30 pm in Amsterdam after earlier suspending most operations. However, the carrier said additional disruptions were likely to continue into the weekend.
Indian low-cost airlines SpiceJet and IndiGo both reported technical issues affecting online services such as booking, check-in and access to boarding passes. The airlines warned of potential long queues at airports for manual check-in.
Delhi International Airport reported some services being affected, with passengers complaining on social media of long waits at check-in and baggage counters, as well as display boards of flight information being down.
Flight tracking site FlightRadar24 showed that among the worst-hit airports in Europe were Berlin, London Stansted and Amsterdam. Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA said it had to divert a Berlin-bound flight back to Oslo, while the airport in the German capital showed almost no flight movements on the tracking site earlier on Friday. Gatwick said had experienced some issues with its IT systems.
Some airlines saw their systems come back swiftly. IAG’s Iberia said its systems were back to normal after the airline completed check-ins manually due to outages.
In Paris, the city preparing for the Olympic Games in a week’s time, IT systems at the Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports were not directly affected, though the global slowdown delayed check-ins and suspended some flight programmes, Aeroports de Paris said.
Heathrow airport, Europe’s busiest, said flights are operational and advised customers to check with their airlines for the latest information. BLOOMBERG
