A global technology outage appears to have caused several major US airlines to ground departing aircraft, in addition to creating problems at airports and airlines worldwide that threatens to snarl air traffic.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration’s status page, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and American Airlines early on 19 July have all stopped the departure of aircraft for flights “regardless of destination” due to “communications issues”. Aircraft currently flying are unaffected, and pilots will be informed of the problem, the FAA says.
Several media report that the issue relates to problem at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.
”We’re aware of a technical issue with Crowdstrike that is impacting multiple carriers,” American Airlines says. “American is working with Crowdstrike to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.” The airline confirmed that the ground stop remains in place and that the airline is ”in contact with our planes currently in flight”.
Chicago-based United, meantime, adds: ”A third party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide, including at United. While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports. Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations.”
Delta did not immediately respond to requests for comment or further information.
Aviation infrastructure in other countries has also been affected.
Dutch carrier KLM says it will have to “largely suspend” operations to counter the outage. ”KLM and other airlines and airports have been affected by a global computer outage, making flight handling impossible,” it says in a statement. ”We’re working hard to resolve the problem. Until then, we will have to largely suspend operations.”
Ryanair posted on its website that there could be “potential disruptions across the network due to a global third party system outage.” Germany’s Berlin-Brandenburg airport posted a notice on its website that “due to technical issues, there are delays in handling”.
Spanish airport operator AENA says in a website note: “Due to an incident in the IT system, there are interruptions in Aena’s systems and network airports in Spain, which could cause delays. We are working to resolve this as soon as possible. In the meantime, operations are being carried out using manual systems.”
Lufthansa Group websites have put up a banner for customers saying, “Currently, the profile and booking retrieval functionality may be limited. We are working on a solution.”
Earlier in the day, US ultra-low-cost carriers Frontier Airlines and Allegiant Airlines as well as Sun Country Airlines suspended operations due to a similar IT issue with Microsoft’s Azure cloud software.
In the UK, train operations seemed to have been hit, as were telecommunications operations in Australia. The BBC also reports that banks have been affected, and Sky News has been off the air.
Story updated at 10:00 to include KLM statement
