BWI flights canceled, delayed; Maryland Emergency Center at partial activation over Microsoft outage

BALTIMORE -- The Maryland Department of Emergency Management increased the State Activation Level from Normal to Partial on Friday morning in response to a Microsoft outage that has paralyzed systems worldwide, including some at BWI Airport.

The agency says Partial activation is for "an incident or event requiring significant monitoring or resources," meaning there is additional Emergency Operations Center staffing from other agencies and organizations.  

Banks, airlines, television networks and health systems across the world are impacted by the outage.   

CBS News reports the issue was caused by a technical problem that global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said it had identified in its software and was working to resolve. CrowdStrike provides antivirus software to Microsoft for its Windows devices.  

"The underlying cause has been fixed, however, residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services. We're conducting additional mitigations to provide relief," Microsoft said in a statement on social media.  

BWI sees Impact 

Over 1,000 flights had been cancelled in the U.S. by early Friday morning and more than 1,700 others were delayed. There were 11 cancellations and 89 delays at BWI Airport. 

In a packed terminal, some travelers left in limbo told WJZ they had been waiting overnight. Spirit Airlines is writing out boarding passes manually, while Southwest Airlines is unimpacted. 

"Please confirm flight status with your airline prior to coming to the airport," the airport said Friday morning. "Be patient if traveling today."

American Airlines, Delta, United Airlines and Spirit Airlines grounded all pending flight departures, though American Airlines, United and Delta resumed at least some flight departures later Friday morning.