A massive IT outage has led to the cancellation of over 4,000 flights worldwide, including 2500 within the United States, affecting thousands of passengers and causing widespread travel disruptions. As of 5 p.m. Eastern Time, the number of canceled flights had surged to 2,624, representing roughly 10% of all departures from U.S. airports for the day, according to FlightAware.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is closely monitoring the situation, which involves technical issues impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines. The FAA confirmed that several airlines have requested assistance for ground stops until the problem is resolved.
The outage is believed to be linked to a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which affects Microsoft Windows operating systems. CrowdStrike’s CEO announced that the IT issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed. Despite this, residual impacts are still affecting some services.
On a busy travel day, with up to 3.7 million passengers flying out of U.S. airports, the disruption has led to significant operational challenges. Cirium, an aviation analytics company, reports that about 24,000 domestic and 3,000 international flights were scheduled. The incident has already caused delays and cancellations across major U.S. carriers, including American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Allegiant Airlines, SunCountry, and Frontier Airlines.
American Airlines has reported that it has “safely reestablished” operations, while United Airlines has resumed some flights. Delta Air Lines has resumed a portion of its flights but anticipates further delays and cancellations.
The FAA stated that it is “closely monitoring” the technical issue and assisting airlines with ground stops. Microsoft has confirmed that the underlying cause of the outage has been fixed but noted that some services are still experiencing residual impacts.
The situation is reminiscent of past disruptions, such as the holiday travel chaos on December 23, 2022, when approximately 5,300 flights were canceled in the U.S. However, experts suggest that the financial impact on airlines will be relatively modest compared to the industry’s overall forecasted net income of $30.5 billion for 2024.
Jonathan Root, lead airlines analyst at Moody’s Ratings, noted that while the incident’s timing is unfortunate, coming at a peak travel period, it highlights the fragility of the aviation system. Root emphasized that despite the substantial disruption, the overall financial impact on airlines is expected to be in the tens to low hundreds of millions of dollars.
As of 4:50 p.m. Eastern, the five U.S. airports with the highest number of cancellations were Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson (318), Chicago O’Hare (116), Minneapolis/St. Paul (104), New York’s LaGuardia (102), and Newark (100). Delta Air Lines reported the highest number of cancellations in the U.S., with 898 flights affected. United Airlines and American Airlines reported 412 and 366 cancellations, respectively.
The global technology outage has not only impacted airlines but also extended to health care systems, banks, and various other sectors, demonstrating the broad and interconnected nature of modern technological dependencies.
