Passengers queue at London’s Gatwick Airport amid global IT outages on Friday.
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Disruption caused by Friday global technology incident The outage continued on Saturday, as employees at airlines, banks, hospitals and other critical businesses scrambled to resolve a backlog caused by a historic technology outage that affected 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide.
Airlines are playing the biggest game of catch-up yet, after carriers were forced to cancel thousands of flights on Friday, leaving planes and crews stranded in unwanted locations. As of Saturday afternoon, nearly 1,500 flights across the US were canceled for the day, with another one on 4,600 flights delayed, according to flight tracking website Flight knowledge.
Meanwhile, stranded tourists expressed frustration.
Mariah Grant, an American, told NPR that she was stuck in London after her flight to New York was significantly delayed due to the power outage: “My whole trip was pretty much ruined.”
Grant also called the experience humbling.
“I think it all shows the fact that we are so reliant on technology,” she said, adding that she was grateful to customer service staff at London Gatwick Airport who helped reassure her and rebook her flight.
“This experience really showed me how much humans still need to be able to manage what happens when technology doesn’t meet our needs,” Grant said.
Hospitals are also left with a backlog of patients after being forced to cancel appointments, including elective surgeries.
Boston-based Massachusetts Brigham and Women’s Hospital said it was back in operation on Saturday after canceling all non-emergency surgeries and other appointments on Friday due to a power outage.
“Our response teams continue to work diligently throughout the week to address the many additional impacts across our system caused by the CrowdStrike incident,” Noah Brown, the hospital’s director of global communications, told NPR in a written statement.
Microsoft users around the world found themselves out of access after a flawed software update from a cybersecurity group called CrowdStrike.
In a statement, Austin-based CrowdStrike said it was “actively working with customers” whose displays were affected by the incident, confirming it was not a cyberattack.
Microsoft said on Saturday that the CrowdStrike update affected 8.5 million devices, less than 1% of all Windows machines.
“While this percentage is small, the broader economic and societal impact reflects the businesses that rely on CrowdStrike to run many critical services,” wrote David Weston, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of operating systems and enterprise security. in a blog post.
