The airline industry is having a rough day so far, due to a major IT outage…
In this post:
Airlines around the globe ground flights due to IT issues
Over the past several hours (early Friday morning US time), we’ve seen some major global IT outages. First we saw Microsoft have a major outage impacting Microsoft’s Azure services and Microsoft 365 suite of apps in some regions, and then we’ve seen a CrowdStrike software update that caused additional issues.
All parties insist this is not a security incident or cyberattack, and that they’ve identified and isolated the incident, and are deploying a fix.
While this has impacted all kinds of industries, the implications most relevant to OMAAT readers are that airlines around the globe have largely paused flight in recent hours.
For example, early Friday morning we’ve seen American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines, all suspend flights, as they work through this outage.
This issue has now persisted for hours, so we’ll see when the situation is resolved, and airlines can resume their flights.
This will have a huge domino effect for airlines
From the perspective of the US airline industry, at least this happened in the very early morning hours, when not many flights are departing. Obviously the impact of this would be much greater if this happened a bit later in the day, when a huge number of flights are departing.
Even though this happened at the best possible time (in some sense), I’d expect this to have some implications for airlines throughout the day. Airlines plan their schedules with not much of a buffer, so delays with one flight can lead to delays for the rest of the day. Here’s a look at current flight cancelations and delays globally.
For example, I’m seeing many flights from Europe to the United States on US airlines delayed today, and that could of course impact connections as well.
Bottom line
It’s not a great Friday for airlines so far, as an IT outage is causing many airlines to pause flights. Hopefully this is resolved soon. Even once resolved, though, make sure you’re patient if traveling today, as there could be some delays.
Were the flights of any OMAAT readers impacted by this Microsoft outage?
My travel day today went almost to plan to be honest with 3 flights (2 connections) from Europe to the US West coast. The usual delay at IAD, but we entirely made up for it by the end of the day. Just having to check in at a Hyatt Regency using paper forms was a bit ... odd :)
Wild that SW isn't impacted because their systems are so old. Can't have night flights, but at least software update won't ground ya.
That is funny but not 100% accurate. I’d be surprised if southwest doesn’t have windows machines at airports…and in their data centers. More likely, they aren’t a crowdstrike customer.
*duh da dum da duh* Terminator Rise of the Machine Updates *duh da dum da duh*
I posted last week why Ben had not addressed the Trump assasination attempt. The first response was “how does this affect the travel points world?”
I rest my case. I guarantee all the secret service data regarding how they botched the protection has now been expunged due to this crowd strike failure. It’s ok to ruin the entire U.S. airline industry for a day as long as you can cover your tracks.
I suggest all...
I posted last week why Ben had not addressed the Trump assasination attempt. The first response was “how does this affect the travel points world?”
I rest my case. I guarantee all the secret service data regarding how they botched the protection has now been expunged due to this crowd strike failure. It’s ok to ruin the entire U.S. airline industry for a day as long as you can cover your tracks.
I suggest all of us to please wake up and realize that something even as trivial as a “hobby” is inextricably linked to massive global events. Your hatred for him and lack of foresight in predicting what could happen in Trump assassination attempt aftermath clouded your judgment and is still skewing how you see the current IT failure.
Wake up people - you are all lemmings.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s
Ah look, Vinay Bhai is back posting more nonsense
I don't quite work in the same space but my job deals with customers in a similar way so I have some sympathy for Crowdstrike. Products can be extremely complex and properly 'testing' everything can involve entire departments working to qualify products before release across a huge range of systems and even still we run into issues after release. Sometimes stuff like this happens and Crowdstrike will (hopefully) learn a great deal from this, but...
I don't quite work in the same space but my job deals with customers in a similar way so I have some sympathy for Crowdstrike. Products can be extremely complex and properly 'testing' everything can involve entire departments working to qualify products before release across a huge range of systems and even still we run into issues after release. Sometimes stuff like this happens and Crowdstrike will (hopefully) learn a great deal from this, but prevention is entirely dependent on the creativity of the entire team and it can be really really difficult.
That being said I'm not saying Crowdstrike didn't make a mistake here. This was a huge mistake that probably burned many dollars across many companies. I'm not even saying Crowdstrike's release procedure was sufficient to prevent something like this. I just wanted to add some light as to why huge companies may make mistakes like this.
Also: every bit of software and hardware you're using I guarantee has some sort of vulnerability/bug that hasn't been fixed yet.
Everybody understands that but when you hold yourself out as a global provider of services, you have to take responsibility for your screwups.
The amount of lost revenue and cost to consumers - directly or indirectly - is enormous.
Yep agreed. There's also an argument to be made about entire industries relying on a single twine not snapping
One is left wondering...
Did Crowdstrike think to, you know, test their code before releasing it in the wild?
Yes, they did test it. Things still break in complex systems. And Microsoft tested the updates they deployed too. Is it ok, no. But vendors send out bad patches all the time. They just don’t usually have the market share of these too. The root problem is that our infrastructure is to homogenous.
When will the Justice dept go after Crowdstrike for this error is then the question? There needs to be accountability and the phrase 'too big to fail' should no longer be applied to any one entity.
and let's not forget that this affects Microsoft platforms so they were not able to isolate Crowdstrike's error.
CRWD market cap is more than twice that of DAL, the highest market cap airline in the world.
MSFT is more than the revenues of the entire global airline industry.
The two of them should be able to figure out who foots the bill but the notion that airlines should pick up the tab is beyond non-sense.
Change your headline. It's a Crowdstrike issue, not Microsoft
there have been two major IT failures in the last 24 hours - one from Microsoft and the latest from Crowdstrike
Tim, not doing fluff check?
what is most unbelievable is this statement from Mayor Pete:
"We are monitoring technical issues at Frontier leading to cancellations and delays," said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. "Our department will hold all airlines to their responsibilities to meet the needs of passengers."
where is holding these massive IT companies responsible for their failures?
and, while we are at it, where is holding the FAA responsible for its failure to properly staff ATC which...
what is most unbelievable is this statement from Mayor Pete:
"We are monitoring technical issues at Frontier leading to cancellations and delays," said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. "Our department will hold all airlines to their responsibilities to meet the needs of passengers."
where is holding these massive IT companies responsible for their failures?
and, while we are at it, where is holding the FAA responsible for its failure to properly staff ATC which is the largest reason for airline delays?
Regardless of if it's a vendor issue or not, airlines have a responsibility to carry passengers. Easier said than done but maybe the underlying subtext of the quote is that airlines should identify points of failure and create better backups. Airlines also have the responsibility to hold IT companies accountable for their failures if they affect airline operations.
edited:
Airlines and media companies and financial services company and food and beverage outlets and retailers and...also have the responsibility to hold IT companies accountable for their failures if they affect airline operations.
Nobody is saying that airlines don't or shouldn't take care of their customers - but ALL businesses should hold vendors accountable and demand compensation - and in this case there are billions of dollars of lost revenue and extra costs involved.
edited:
Airlines and media companies and financial services company and food and beverage outlets and retailers and...also have the responsibility to hold IT companies accountable for their failures if they affect airline operations.
Nobody is saying that airlines don't or shouldn't take care of their customers - but ALL businesses should hold vendors accountable and demand compensation - and in this case there are billions of dollars of lost revenue and extra costs involved.
IT companies are more consolidated than airlines. They should be held to even higher standards for their actions.
Companies are responsible for vetting the systems they use. It's the logic as a restaurant choosing what vendor supplies its food, so that customers don't get food poisoning.
You can make a statement about how certain tech companies are effective monopolies.
and when a single company can screw up so badly that massive impacts are felt around the world, the situation is well beyond the responsibility of any company to "vet" their providers.
Don't take my word, though.
There will be governments get involved and the impact to Crowdstrike will be far worse than the 10% decline in their shares today.
@ Tim Dunn, do you have a single clue what is in the agreements between these companies and Cloudstrike as to who bears the responsibility for an outage? Any clue whatsoever? Or are you just speculating? The stock market -- representing the collective wisdom behind trillions of dollars of wealth -- says that Cloudstrike lost 10% today. Who made a dude with a worn-out keyboard smarter than the entire stock market? For someone who likes...
@ Tim Dunn, do you have a single clue what is in the agreements between these companies and Cloudstrike as to who bears the responsibility for an outage? Any clue whatsoever? Or are you just speculating? The stock market -- representing the collective wisdom behind trillions of dollars of wealth -- says that Cloudstrike lost 10% today. Who made a dude with a worn-out keyboard smarter than the entire stock market? For someone who likes to tell us to stick to facts, you're sure not afraid to speculate.
stock market losses have nothing to do with the expenses and lost revenue that CRWD's client companies incurred
@Tim Dunn -- "stock market losses have nothing to do with the expenses and lost revenue that CRWD's client companies incurred" -- do you seriously think that the stock market is not discounting whatever SLA make-goods Cloudstrike may or may not have to pay into the stock price today? How can you possibly say that the 11% drop in the strike isn't connected? Is this really the level of understanding of the stock market that writers at SeekingAlpha have?
YOU truly don't get it.
Their stock is falling because of legitimate fears of loss of accounts. The fall in the stock price - even their entire market cap - couldn't cover the global loss of revenue at client companies and customer inconvenience
Trying to throw shade because you can't grasp the difference between the impact to a company's share price and the actual costs to client companies say far more about you than me.
@Tim Dunn, the stock price is probably falling because of loss of accounts, the potential cost of SLA make-goods, potential future regulatory challenges and any number of other factors that neither you nor I understand. To say that the stock price decline is due to one factor only (especially when elsewhere in this thread you are saying that they are going to be held responsible for losses due to outages) is the type of narrow...
@Tim Dunn, the stock price is probably falling because of loss of accounts, the potential cost of SLA make-goods, potential future regulatory challenges and any number of other factors that neither you nor I understand. To say that the stock price decline is due to one factor only (especially when elsewhere in this thread you are saying that they are going to be held responsible for losses due to outages) is the type of narrow financial analysis that I expect from blog commenters, not professionals.
All the Starbucks are closed in our area. I asked the four employees just standing there if I could just leave cash - they can keep the change. She looked at me if I was crazy, "We can't make coffee without our computer system to ring up coffee." Seems that the human element is vanishing quickly to think outside the box. It's going to be humans that are the robots very soon.
That's on you for going to a big corporate chain coffee shop with big corporate policies in place
Boomer baffled that employees who were "just standing there" will not break corporate policy for him, blames robots.
Starbucks isn't interested in taking your money without having it be properly accounted for. The employees are doing exactly what they're supposed to do.
@Antwerp Support your local, non-corporate owned coffee shop. Easy solution.
Unfortunately, the outage is affecting many industries nationwide.
My spouse has a same day round trip business flight today on Delta. They cancelled the 4p return and moved him to 7p, but the departing flight is okay. Seems like they're being as proactive as they can
@breathesrain - that was my experience, as well. I was scheduled to fly out west tonight, and Delta proactively advised me my SLC connection was now impossible and offered me a refund or credit. My flight was at 7:00 PM and was moved to 9:00 PM. I learned this at 10 AM. A few clicks and a refund was on the way. Much appreciated. Now, those bozos at Marriott...
It's not impacting DELTA.
https://news.delta.com/update/july-19-2024-operation/delta-experiencing-technology-issue
That's not the real Tim, just another troll that thinks they're funny.
I just wish this nonsense ended, it’s getting stale.
thank you.
The clearly can't win with facts so they troll
There is one person that could end it all - and that is Ben.
It really shouldn't be that hard to block certain usernames that are not registered, as I am.
Tim thinks he's important enough to have a rule implemented on the comment section of a website just for him. I'm dying.
The day that you stop spewing never-ending, repetitive, completely unrelated, fact bending, Delta-does-no-wrong comments on every post, I see Ben changing that, but WE ALL KNOW you’re not capable of that, so let the Tim Dunn guest comments keep on coming! I for one find them hilarious.
"so let the Tim Dunn guest comments keep on coming! I for one find them hilarious."
Negative. It was funny the first 5,000 times but now it's more annoying than even he is.
Tim, stop with your sad "I stick with facts and y'all just offer your useless opinions" shtick. A month ago I called you out on a thread where you had told everyone else to stick to facts, then you inserted your own opinion with absolutely no facts to back it up. When I called you on it, you got defensive, condescending and verbose, but offered no facts. Earlier this week over at View from the...
Tim, stop with your sad "I stick with facts and y'all just offer your useless opinions" shtick. A month ago I called you out on a thread where you had told everyone else to stick to facts, then you inserted your own opinion with absolutely no facts to back it up. When I called you on it, you got defensive, condescending and verbose, but offered no facts. Earlier this week over at View from the Wing, you said I was paid for by AA when I called you out on a statement that was objectively false. When I asked you to back that up with facts, you disappeared. Put up or shut up Tim. If you're not going to stick with facts, don't offer condescending statements like "the (sic) clearly can't win with facts so they troll".
When you say "ALL businesses should hold vendors accountable and demand compensation" -- have you done any research whatsoever into the specific terms of Delta, AA, United, etc.'s contracts with their IT providers and who holds liability in what circumstances, or are you just spouting your opinion -- as opposed to, in your own words, sticking to facts? Since you're such a fan of sticking to facts, hopefully you have some to back up your opinion.
When you say "ALL businesses should hold vendors accountable and demand compensation"...
Agreed, this is an extremely naïve statement, and all it does is expose that the speaker doesn't know what an SLA is. For starters.
Regardless of the fact that it’s not going to be in the contracts, crowdstrike would be bankrupt before a tiny fraction of compensation was paid and the companies and would all have to spend money to implement a new edr took. Lose/lose
Timmy’s wrong again…. *said in the voice of the professor from the waterboy*
Now I am hearing that they don’t think they can deploy a push update and may have to publish the code for manual deployment locally. This is not going to be a quick fix!
Per the PA announcements in Charlotte, they are doing VERY limited boarding of “crew critical” flights (flights where the crew is going to timeout). That said, they’re not letting any flights actually take off yet.
IT person here. Microsoft had an outage in Central US region. That took down Frontier Airlines and some major sites. But that is resolved. The latest issue is with a Crowdstrike software update that causes an OS crash then the servers get in a reboot loop.
Technically, Crowdstrike is down today, not Microsoft. Microsoft Azure outage was yesterday.