By D. Maan, Jadetimes News
Nationwide Grounding of Flights by Major US Airlines Cites Global IT Outage Resulting in Communication Problems
A worldwide IT outage took responsibility for the mass grounding of flights across the US for a number of major airlines. It has also hit banks, emergency services, and airports worldwide.
American Airlines, the world's biggest airline measured by passengers, said no flights were being permitted to depart and that it was in contact with all flights currently in the air. The carrier blamed a "technical issue" with CrowdStrike, a provider of antivirus software. There are unconfirmed reports suggesting a recent software update from CrowdStrike caused crashes in Windows devices. CrowdStrike has not yet responded to these claims.
The spokeswoman for the Los Angeles International Airport said, "Some flights are taking off and landing", which means basically that the problem is more with the airline rather than the airport.
The tech outage has hit flights operated by Delta and United Airlines, as well as some smaller carriers. Late Thursday, Frontier Airlines said a "major Microsoft technical outage" was affecting its operations. US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said his department was monitoring technical issues at Frontier, leading to cancellations and delays throughout their network.
The IT outage is also keeping flights grounded in other countries. Narita Airport, located about 60 kilometers from Tokyo, JetStar said it was reporting system problems, along with Jeju Air, Qantas, HK Express, and Spring Japan. In India, Delhi Airport said that some services had been briefly affected. The latest to report delays is Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, with a spokesperson confirming that the outage affected flights to and from Schiphol, though the extent remains unclear.
The disruption worldwide shows just how interconnected the world of travel truly is and how much airlines depend on IT systems. Authorities and airlines are at work to rectify the situation, to resume regular operations as quickly as possible.
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