Global IT outage causes widespread disruptions across airports

A massive IT outage Friday caused long delays, cancellations, and check-in problems at airports around the world, hitting not only airlines but various other industries.

The disruption, which was blamed on a glitch in Microsoft software, impacted a vast network of services and caused considerable chaos for travellers.

More than 110,000 commercial flights were due to operate on the day; however, by this afternoon already, 2,691 flights had been cancelled worldwide, according to the aviation analytics firm Cirium.

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Among the airports affected was Edinburgh, where boarding pass scanners said that a "server is offline message" appeared, with passengers advised to check their flight status online before heading to the airport.

In response to the disruption, many airports and airlines adopted manual check-in processes.

Hong Kong International Airport, however, reported that even as the Microsoft outage was affecting several carriers, flight operations were unaffected. Singapore's Changi Airport also had to result in manual check-ins.

The aviation sector, most sensitive to time and coordination, took a hit as even small delays had flights across the globe out of schedule.

Microsoft said that some of its Office 365 apps and services could experience issues because of a "configuration change in part of our Azure-backed workloads," the company tweeted.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike confirmed it was working with clients affected by the issue caused by a flaw in a Windows update, which contributed to the far-flung glitches.

The blackout was hence very provoking to passengers. At Madrid-Barajas, however, travellers were greeted by long queues and no information, hence a confused wait.

Ana Rodriguez, a tourist from Mexico, also described the chaotic scene of the passengers waiting in different lines only to be told where to check in later.

In New Delhi, resorts to IT failures were made, with airlines issuing handwritten boarding passes and also displaying flight information on whiteboards, while passengers at Baltimore Airport had to wait for long as Spirit Airlines employees processed tickets from paper manifests by hand.

The Federal Aviation Administration reported that major airlines such as American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta issued ground stops in the United States in the early hours of the day due to communication problems.

While American Airlines later resumed its operations, Delta still delayed or even cancelled flights around Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Salt Lake City.

Even with all this, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was optimistic that transportation could return to normal on Saturday.

In Europe, some carriers like Spanish airline Iberia did not cancel flights, while there were major disruptions at Amsterdam's Schiphol and Berlin airports.

Questions also remain over passenger compensation. In Europe, carriers usually have to compensate travellers when delays exceed three hours, but the airline could argue this outage constitutes an "extraordinary circumstance" under EU statute.

US carriers are not legally bound to compensate for delays, and it is not clear whether an IT issue will be considered an "airline-caused" delay.

(With inputs from Reuters)