IT Outage Grounds Major U.S. Airlines

Major U.S. air carriers including Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines were forced to ground flights early Friday morning following a global IT Outage affecting airports, banks, media companies and other businesses around the world.

USA Today reported more than 1,100 flights were canceled and more than 1,700 were delayed as of 8 a.m. ET, according to FlightAware data. Despite the hiccup, most airlines were able to resume normal operations shortly after, although travelers should be warned of residual impacts from the delays. In Europe, Lufthansa, Eurowings and SAS were also affected by the outage, highlighting problems with booking and their online check-in systems.

The outage was traced back to an issue affecting Microsoft windows programs using cyber-security technology from CrowdStrike. In a statement on X, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the company is working with customers to address the issue. “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed,” Kurtz noted.