IT outages have been reported across the globe as airlines, airports, banks and media companies have suddenly experienced ongoing disruptions that have upended the daily lives of potentially millions of people.
American Airlines, United and Delta have asked the FAA for global ground stop on all flights, according to an alert from the FAA on Friday morning.
However, at approximately 5 a.m. ET, American Airlines issued a statement that they were back up and running as normal.
“Earlier this morning, a technical issue with a vendor impacted multiple carriers, including American. As of 5 a.m. ET, we have been able to safely re-establish our operation. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience,” the statement read.
The FAA is telling air traffic controllers to tell airborne pilots that airlines are currently experiencing communication issues.
“No one here knows anything, the gate agents said we all know as much as they do,” Scott Sanders told ABC News, saying his flight from SeaTac Airport in Washington was delayed for two hours on the tarmac before passengers were deplaned. “I feel awful for the employees and those that have a sick loved one they need to get to or funerals, thankfully that’s not us.”
Meanwhile, flights in the air will stay in the air, but no American, United or Delta flights have been taking off.
“We’re aware of a technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple carriers. American is working with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience,” American Airlines said in a statement obtained by ABC News.
“A third party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide, including at United,” United Airlines said in a statement on Friday morning. “While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports. Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations.”
It is unclear how widespread the issue is but Melbourne Airport in Australia has also said they are “experiencing a global technology issue” which is impacting their check-in procedures.
Global IT outages have also been reported in many countries across the world including Berlin Airport in Germany, the London Stock Exchange, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom.
“We’re investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services,” Microsoft said in a statement released on social media Friday morning.
Crowdstrike, the U.S. cybersecurity company, has admitted to being responsible for the error and are working to correct it.
“Crowdstrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows 4 related to the Falcon sensor. Please monitor the status via the tech alert on our customer support portal,” says a message on the Crowdstrike technical help line on Friday morning.
What they’re saying: A United spokesperson said in an emailed statement Friday morning that a “third party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide,” including at the airline.
“While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports,” the spokesperson added. “Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations.”An American Airlines spokesperson said in a Friday morning email that a ground stop in place was impacting departing flights and the company was in contact with its planes “currently in flight.”
The airline was “aware of a technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple carriers” and it was working with the cybersecurity firm in an effort to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, per the statement.Delta confirmed in a Friday morning online post that it had paused all flights as it worked through “a vendor technology issue.”
Representatives for Microsoft and the FAA did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.
State of play: Frontier Airlines briefly grounded all flights on Thursday after being “impacted by a Microsoft outage,” which it noted in a post to X was “also affecting other companiesMicrosoft said in an online update that “many customers” in the Central U.S. region “experienced issues” with its Azure cloud computing platform services, “including failures with service management operations and connectivity or availability of services” from around 6pm ET.
However, the Azure status page indicated later Thursday that these issues had been resolved.Our thought bubble, via Axios’ Alex Fitzpatrick: Even after these ground stops are lifted, travelers should brace for delays throughout the day as airlines work to get their planes into their scheduled positions.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.Ford
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