Flights from Southern California airports resume after global Microsoft outage linked to CrowdStrike
Los Angeles International Airport, Hollywood Burbank Airport, Long Beach Airport and John Wayne Airport in Orange County temporarily had to ground departing flights on Friday, July 19, due to a global Microsoft outage linked to CrowdStrike.
Airlines were asked the Federal Aviation Administration for a global ground stop on all flights, according to an alert from the FAA.
"We are seeing some delays from United, Delta and American Airlines. Our communications center is in constant communications with the FAA," said LAX spokeswoman Dae Levine.
Flights that already in the air will be allowed to continue toward their destinations but American, United or Delta flights will not depart from their airports.
Later Friday, passengers crowded the terminals of LAX as lines grew longer due to electronic check-in processes also being impacted by the outage. Some said they were struggling to reach their destinations or make their way back home.
"We're just checking in our bags and then they kept bringing back our bags, saying the tag wasn't right," said Roger Brown, who was flying to Puerto Rico. "We just see everyone before us leaving, and yeah, we didn't go anywhere."
"They just stopped and shut down and said our booking wasn't working," he said.
The FAA is telling air traffic controllers to tell airborne pilots that airlines are currently experiencing communication difficulties.
"We're aware of a technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple carriers. American is working with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience," American Airlines said in a statement.
CrowdStrike is a U.S. cybersecurity company that has admitted to being responsible for the error and is working to correct it.
"A third party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide, including at United," United Airlines said in a statement on Friday morning. "While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports. Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations."
American Airlines issued a statement at 2 a.m. Friday that they were back up and running as normal.
"Earlier this morning, a technical issue with a vendor impacted multiple carriers, including American. As of 5 a.m. ET, we have been able to safely re-establish our operation. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience," the statement read.
Outages are spreading worldwide and are being reported at Berlin Airport in Germany, the London Stock Exchange, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom.
CrowdStrike issued a statement, stating the cybersecurity company is "actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."
Meanwhile, Microsoft said it is investigating the extent of the outage.
"We're investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services," Microsoft said in a statement released on social media Friday morning.
Shipments at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are being disrupted and delayed. KNX is reporting hundreds of trucks have been waiting for hours for cargo to be released and loaded.
Amtrak is reporting the outage is preventing credit card transactions for its Pacific Surfliner service. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPay payments can be used to complete online reservations.
