As companies around the world bring their systems back online after a widespread technical outage on Friday, July 19, the impact continues for airports and airlines. Air travel continues to recover from disruptions caused by a Blue Screen of Death error that caused computers running Microsoft Windows to go offline. Mac and Linux hosts were not affected.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike was at the center of the outage by distributing a flawed update to Microsoft Windows-based systems. The company confirmed that the outage was not related to any security incident or cyberattack. Microsoft estimated that 8.5 million devices running the Windows operating system were affected. Airlines around the world were forced to cancel flights, unable to issue boarding passes or fulfil check-in and baggage drop requirements. Airports were also heavily affected, unable to operate all services and resulting in queues as they could not handle both departing and arriving passengers.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport in Germany suspended all flights on the morning of Friday, July 19, with other air transport hubs including Edinburgh, Melbourne, Dallas-Fort Worth, Buffalo Niagara Falls, Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and Spanish airline AENA all affected.
While many services were back online and operating as normal by Saturday, George Kurtz, CEO of security firm CrowdStrike, warned that full restoration could take weeks. The outage also highlights a possible over-reliance on digital technology, cloud-based solutions and artificial intelligence (AI) across the industry. It also highlights the need for airports to remain flexible and resilient, with robust emergency response plans in place and human oversight of AI and technology systems.
As for CrowdStrike’s plan of action, the company said in a statement that it is conducting a “thorough root cause analysis to determine how this logic flaw occurred,” and that as this work continues, the company is “committed to identifying fundamental or workflow improvements to strengthen our processes.”
