On Friday, major U.S. airlines, including American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Air, grounded flights due to technical issues. This grounding occurred shortly after Microsoft announced it had resolved a cloud services outage that had impacted several low-cost carriers.
Airline Ground Stops
The airlines grounded their flights for less than an hour, but it remains unclear if this decision was directly related to the earlier Microsoft cloud outage. This unexpected disruption caused significant inconvenience for passengers and raised questions about the reliability of the technical systems that airlines depend on.
Global Ripple Effect
In Australia, outages were reported across media companies, banks, and telecom firms. The Australian government suggested that these issues were linked to a problem at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. According to Downdetector, several banks and telecom companies experienced outages, which were seemingly connected to Microsoft’s Windows operating system crashes related to Crowdstrike’s Falcon sensor.
Crowdstrike’s Response
When contacted, Crowdstrike’s technical support had a recorded message acknowledging the reports of system crashes tied to their Falcon sensor on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. However, they did not specifically mention Australia. Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator’s office stated there was no evidence to suggest that the outages were due to a cybersecurity incident.
India Impact
The IT disruptions also extended to India, affecting operations at Delhi Airport. Authorities there posted on X social media stating, “Due to the global IT issue, some of the services at the Delhi Airport were temporarily impacted. We are closely working with all our stakeholders to minimise the inconvenience to our flyers.” This statement highlights the widespread nature of the IT issues and the steps being taken to address them locally.
European and Global Impact
The disruptions extended to Spain, where all airports experienced a “computer incident.” Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions affecting all airlines operating across its network, though it did not specify the nature of these disruptions.
AWS Investigation
Amazon Web Services (AWS) also reported investigating connectivity issues affecting Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within its cloud service. It was not immediately clear if the reported outages were solely due to Crowdstrike’s issues or if other factors were involved.
With inputs from Reuters
