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AIRLINES began slowly resuming some operations following a chaotic start to the day in the wake of a widespread global software meltdown, with thousands of delayed or cancelled flights that risk leaving the system bent out of shape for days. 

United Airlines said it started up some operations after all fights had been previously grounded. Delta Air Lines also picked up some flight departures again, issuing a travel waiver to help people rebook or re-arrange their plans. Other US carriers that had temporarily grounded flights included American Airlines Group and Spirit Airlines, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The slow reboot followed a morning marked by severe global dislocation amid an IT-system meltdown that hobbled communication between aircraft and ground-control staff. The disruption hit travellers on a particularly active day – the UK, for example, was preparing for the highest number of daily departures since October 2019, according to aviation data provider Cirium.

FlightAware put global delays at more than 21,000 flights, while Cirium said US cancellations stood at about 4.2 per cent of all scheduled flights – far in excess of what’s typical at that time of day. The chaos played out at airports around the globe, with hubs from Berlin, Amsterdam to Delhi International Airport bearing 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 airports in the world, a woman in tears sat at the United gate for her cancelled flight to Phoenix.

“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, and network operations centers go offline. Cancelled long-haul flights, in particular, will have ripple effects for days, coming at the peak of the summer travel season.

And the financial cost of the meltdown won’t be known for a while. United said it has issued a waiver to make it easier for customers to change travel plans. But for thousands of people planning to head to their vacation, the journey started with severe, and potentially expensive, chaos.

“Disruption and delays impose costs on European airlines, even if they are not required to compensate consumers for delays resulting from ‘extraordinary circumstances,’” Ruairi Cullinane, RBC analyst, wrote on Friday (Jul 19) in a note.

While outages can occur in the aviation industry, one on such a global scale is a rare event. 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 known as Notams.

The latest meltdown is affecting airlines differently. For some, the outage restricted the ability of network operations centers from communicating with stations and airports, while for others, passengers were 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, such as ACARS, the FAA said in an advisory.

In Amsterdam, KLM said it had been forced to suspend “most operations” as the outage made it “impossible to handle flights.” 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 lines at airports for manual check-in.  

Delhi International Airport reported some services being impacted, with passengers complaining on social media of long waits at check-in and baggage counters, as well as display boards of flight information 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, with the airport in the German capital showing almost no flight movements on the tracking site. Gatwick said that it’s experiencing some issues with its IT systems. 

Some airlines saw their systems come back swiftly. IAG’s Iberia said its systems are back to normal after the airline completed check-ins manually due to outages. The systems started working again from about 9.30 am, the Spanish airline said.

In Paris, a city preparing for the Olympic Games in a week’s time, IT systems at the Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly were not directly affected, though the global slowdown was hurting check-ins, delays and temporary suspension of certain flight programs at some airlines operating at the airports, Aeroports de Paris said. 

Heathrow airport, Europe’s busiest, said flights are operational “though we are experiencing delays”. 

“We are implementing contingency plans to minimise any impact on journeys,” the London-based airport said. BLOOMBERG