HOUSTON – A worldwide computer outage caused major delays at Houston airports Friday morning.
The issue is affecting many Microsoft users, including banks, airlines, hospitals and other organizations.
Delta, American and United Airlines had major system delays, causing ground stops for those airlines overnight at airports around the world. American Airlines was back online before 6 a.m. in Houston but passengers were still facing delays from the backup.
There are currently no groundstops in place for IAH and HOU. However, the FAA is showing some impacts for specific airlines that have asked the FAA to issue a ground stop for their specific airlines. Flights are moving in and out of both airports this morning.
A third-party outage is impacting computer systems, including at United and many other organizations worldwide.
— United Airlines (@united) July 19, 2024
As we work to fully restore these systems, some flights are resuming. Many customers traveling today may experience delays.
We have issued a waiver to make it easier…
The chaos was caused by a cybersecurity company’s problematic update late Thursday. That affected many operations and businesses that use Microsoft 365 apps and services.
When people tried to log on to their company computers, they got the BSOD, the blue screen of death.
United airlines told KPRC 2′s TJ Parker they’re issuing waivers for passengers:
“A third-party software outage impacted computer systems worldwide, including at United. We are resuming some flights but expect schedule disruptions to continue throughout Friday. We have issued a waiver to make it easier for customers to change their travel plans via United.com or the United app.”
Attention travelers: A global IT outage is affecting several airlines, resulting in delays and longer wait times this morning. Please check directly with your airline for the most current updates on your flight status. https://t.co/9BOm8IddMO
— Bush Intercontinental Airport (@iah) July 19, 2024
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company, posted on X that they’d identified the issue, isolated it and a “fix has been deployed.”
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We…
— George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 19, 2024
Before that CrowdStrike fix was announced, Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
The company did not respond to a request for comment by the Associated Press.
News outlets in Australia — including the ABC and Sky News — were unable to broadcast on their TV and radio channels, and reported sudden shutdowns of Windows-based computers.
An X user posted a screenshot of an alert from the company Crowdstrike that said the company was aware of “reports of crashes on Windows hosts” related to its Falcon Sensor platform. The alert was posted on a password-protected Crowdstrike site and could not be verified. Crowdstrike did not respond to a request for comment.