An alert from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) earlier this morning said that major US carriers, such as United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and American Airlines, asked for a ground stop for all flights due to a communications issue.
The agency also asked the air traffic controllers to inform pilots already in the air about various airlines facing communication problems. It was reported that all flights already airborne would continue, but no new flights would take off.According to CNN, the ground stop impacts all airlines’ flights, regardless of where they were scheduled to fly. Details are still emerging, but it’s uncertain how long the ground stop will last. The FAA had earlier said that an update might be available later in the day.
Earlier on Thursday, low-cost carriers, such as Frontier, Allegiant, and Sun Country, also reported outages, affecting their operations. Frontier said that a “major Microsoft technical outage,” affected its operations, while Sun Country reported booking and check-in issues. Spirit Airlines also eventually joined the list of carriers calling for a ground stop.The situation on the ground is constantly evolving as carriers try to make sense of what is happening. American Airlines once tweaked its ground stop alert, allowing certain priority flights to operate, but later changed it back to a full ground stop. Latest reports now say that both American and Spirit have canceled their ground stops.According to Cirium, an aviation analytics company, there are more than 27,000 scheduled flights today from the US, carrying up to 3.7M passengers; of these, 24,000 are domestic only. As of 6:00 AM Eastern Time, 512 flights were canceled from the US. This figure could change as the situation evolves.
Global issueABCNews reports global IT outages in other parts of the world, with banks, media companies, and even the New Zealand Parliament facing issues. Berlin Airport, the London Stock Exchange, Google Cloud, and Gatwick Airport have all reportedly been affected.
According to Cirium, an aviation analytics company, there are more than 27,000 scheduled flights today from the US, carrying up to 3.7M passengers; of these, 24,000 are domestic only. As of 6:00 AM Eastern Time, 512 flights were canceled from the US. This figure could change as the situation evolves.
Global issueABCNews reports global IT outages in other parts of the world, with banks, media companies, and even the New Zealand Parliament facing issues. Berlin Airport, the London Stock Exchange, Google Cloud, and Gatwick Airport have all reportedly been affected.IT security firm Crowdstrike identifies issue
Crowdstrike, the US cybersecurity company, has said that it was responsible for the error and is currently working to rectify it. The company’s CEO, George Kurtz, said that customers have been impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts; Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. He further commented,Reestablishing operations
However, several hours later, airlines have been able to restore their operations. American Airlines, which issued travel waivers for affected customers, shared that the airline was able to reestablish operations.
Meanwhile, Spirit Airlines shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, that while it has been working to manage the impact the outage had on its operations, passengers were still advised to check the status of their flights.