Major IT outage has resulted in delays across airports

A major IT outage has impacted airlines and airports across the world with flights being grounded and airports struggling to check-in customers and handle flights. 

American Airlines, the world’s largest passenger carrier, had announced that none of their flights will be running due to issues with their IT systems. Delta and United Airlines have also been affected by the tech outage. 

European airlines and airports have been impacted too. Leading European carriers including Lufthansa, SAS Airlines, KLM along with budget carriers such as Ryanair and Eurowings have all reported disruptions. 

Lufthansa warned customers that it was experiencing difficulties with the company’s booking retrieval solution. KLM has suspended its operations, following difficulties in handling flights. 

Zurich Airport has announced that it is not allowing planes to land, while flights to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport have been delayed. Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport reported of a technical fault in passengers checking in.  

UK airports had been impacted with Heathrow Airport experiencing delays and passengers experiencing issues with bar codes at security not working. 

Globally, other airports have reported issues too. Christchurch International Airport said that arrival and departing flights had been impacted.  

Meanwhile, at Indira Gandhi International Airport, services had to resort to using paper boarding passes and whiteboard for flight times because of the outage.  

Unconfirmed media reports had suggested that the outage was linked to a software update of antivirus software by Crowd Strike, a cybersecurity company. The update had caused Window devices to crash with media reports saying that the Windows devices had the “blue screen of death”.  

Alongside airlines, media companies, banks and supermarkets have reported issues as a result of the outage.  

The Baltic Hub, Poland’s main marine terminal informed companies to avoid sending containers to the port.