Airlines worldwide are gradually resuming operations after a massive IT crash disrupted global carriers, banks, and financial institutions. The chaos, sparked by an update to an antivirus program, saw passenger crowds swell at airports on Friday as dozens of flights were canceled and services struggled to stay on track.
The disruption began Thursday at 1900 GMT, affecting systems operating on Microsoft Windows running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity software. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz issued a personal apology and confirmed that a fix had been rolled out, though it may take a few days for services to fully normalize.
By Saturday afternoon, check-in services were restored across major airports in Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Singapore’s Changi Airport. “The check-in systems have come back to normal (at Thailand’s five major airports). There are no long queues at the airports as we experienced yesterday,” reported Airports of Thailand President Keerati Kitmanawat.
The White House confirmed that President Joe Biden’s team was in communication with CrowdStrike and affected parties, offering assistance as needed. A senior US administration official stated, “Our understanding is that flight operations have resumed across the country, although some congestion remains.”
The impact of the crash extended beyond aviation, affecting health services in the Netherlands and Britain, media companies like Britain’s Sky News and Australia’s ABC, and various banks and mobile carriers. Australian authorities warned of increased scam and phishing attempts following the outage.
Manual check-ins at some airports led to long lines and frustrated travelers. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initially grounded all flights, but airlines later re-established services and began addressing backlogs. Indigo, India’s largest airline, confirmed that its operations had been “resolved.”
Experts suggest that this incident underscores the vulnerability of global infrastructure to failures in commonly used software. John McDermid, a professor at York University, emphasized the need for resilient infrastructure to withstand such disruptions, noting that reliance on a handful of tech companies can lead to widespread issues.
CrowdStrike remains fully mobilized to assist affected customers, though experts like Oli Buckley from Loughborough University warn that implementing fixes on a large scale may be challenging. The unprecedented scale of this outage is likely to prompt a reevaluation of cybersecurity and system resilience across industries.