Major global IT outage grounds flights, hits banks and businesses around the world (2024)

CrowdStrike says update ‘triggered a logic error’ that led to crashes

There were almost 3,000 flights canceled within or into the United States today as airlines and the world grappled with a massive IT outage that scrambled schedules and scrubbed trips.

Major airlines like Delta, United and American said they experienced disruptions.

As of around 8 p.m. there had been 2,945 cancellations within, into, or out of the United States, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.

Los Angeles International Airport, which is already famous for its traffic gridlock, was among the nation's airports warning passengers to check with their airlines before heading to the airport.

But LAX ranked down the list of U.S. airports with the most cancellations. Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, a major hub, topped the list of U.S. airports with cancellations, and Chicago O’Hare International Airport came in second, according to the website.

After many 911 and nonemergency call centers in the Alaska were impacted by the global IT outage, 911 systems in the state were back to normal today, Alaska State Troopers said.

New Hampshire and Plano, Texas, were among the states and communities that had reported problems with 911 due to the outage, but have since said they were functioning normally.

Online sports gambling site BetMGM said that it was being affected by the global IT outage as well.

The website announced earlier today that it “is experiencing temporary issues due to global IT outages.”

“We are working hard to resolve this and will update customers when we are up and running. Thank you for your patience,” BetMGM said on social media platform X.

Its website was down this evening for what it said was planned maintenance.

There were long lines of people trying to enter the United States from the Mexico border city of Ciudad Juarez after the global IT outage affected U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The U.S. agency said that the problem was processing delays due to outage, which has affected sectors of daily life from air travel to Starbucks mobile ordering services.

Video from Reuters showed long lines and signs leading up to the international bridge that warned drivers of extended waiting times.

Cybersecurity firmCrowdStrikesaw its shares plunge Friday, after a sofware update led to a major outage, affecting businesses across the world.

Shares of the company, which makes software to help firms manage their security in IT environments, opened down more than 14%, and closed down about 11%.

Microsoft, which also reported issues affecting its Azure cloud services and Microsoft 365 suite of apps, closed down just 0.74%.

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Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, seemed to refer to the CrowdStrike outage on X on Friday, saying that overreliance on too few vendors creates “fragile systems.”

“All too often these days, a single glitch results in a system-wide outage, affecting industries from healthcare and airlines to banks and auto-dealers,” Khan wrote. “Millions of people and businesses pay the price.”

Khan cited remarks she gave at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in March, noting that the country’s antitrust laws were passed to safeguard undue concentration of economic power.

Such concentration, Khan wrote on X, can concentrate risk, creating cascading effects like shortages.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., today asked the acting chief information officer of the Defense Department for a briefing by July 26 on the IT issue causing widespread disruptions across the U.S.

“A single point of failure in a cybersecurity strategy has proven time and time again to be a threat to our national security,” Schmitt wrote in a letter.

Schmitt called for a re-examination of cyber safeguards “across the board.”

A Defense Department spokesperson said it was aware of the issues and that personnel were monitoring their networks for possible impacts.

“For operational security reasons, we do not comment on the status of our network operations, information systems or operations to assess cyber threats,” the statement read.

Schmitt wrote a letter in June pressing the department for a strategy to ensure “robust cybersecurity practices.”

CrowdStrike has mobilized employees to help customers still affected by the glitch, CEO George Kurtz said in a blog post this afternoon.

“Nothing is more important to me than the trust and confidence that our customers and partners have put into CrowdStrike. As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again,” Kurtz said.

He echoed CISA’s warning of hackers and scammers trying to exploit confusion over how to fix computers that froze due to the update.

“We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this. I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives,” Kurtz said.

Gary Baulos, 73, was scheduled for open-heart surgery today at Baptist Health hospital in Paducah, Kentucky. His daughter Alison Baulos said the surgery to clear eight blockages and repair an aneurysm was canceled due to the global technology outages.

“It reshuffles everything and leaves us with a lot of anxiety and uncertainty,” she said.

Alison said his father's surgery has not been rescheduled yet, but hopes it can be done on Monday.

“It’s kind of scary knowing that your loved one has this significant issue that warranted getting in right away,” she said. “And now you have to wait the weekend.”

In a statement to NBC News, Baptist Health said they’re “experiencing disruptions tied to the global CrowdStrike incident” and “have canceled some non-emergency procedures while we work to resolve the issue.”

The nightmare scenario that began unfolding this morning at U.S. airports continued well into the afternoon, with less than a quarter of all domestic flights departing on time as of 4 p.m., according to real-time data from Anuvu, an aviation intelligence group.

Most affected was Endeavor Airlines, a regional carrier based in Minnesota, with 40% of all its flights canceled and effectively zero departing on time, according to Anuvu data.

Among major carriers, all flights for Delta, Spirit and United airlines were seeing delays, the data showed.

While other airlines, like Frontier, JetBlue and Southwest, were not directly affected by the global outage, issues at affected airports still resulted in delays for some of those carriers' flights.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has been directing affected passengers to FlightRights.gov to learn about which airlines cover meals and hotels and provide free rebooking.

Electric vehicle makerTeslatemporarily halted production on lines at some of its manufacturing facilities Friday after an unprecedented IT outage impacted global operations due to system issues at cybersecurity firmCrowdStrike.

According to correspondence obtained by CNBC, Tesla’s IT teams notified employees that there was a “windows host outage,” and different systems were affected including “servers, laptops and manufacturing devices.” The IT teams informed Tesla employees that they may see a “blue screen” on their various devices.

Tesla CEOElon Musk, who also owns social media platform X, posted several complaints about the CrowdStrike outages to his account, which has more than 190 million followers, throughout the morning.

With Starbucks' mobile order-ahead feature still unavailable, baristas have directed customers with handwritten signs to "plz come to walk-up."

A Starbucks barista in Washington, D.C., told CNBC that her store had to manually write out tickets for customers this morning, while an anonymous Starbucks supervisor posted "We are SUFFERING" on Reddit. "Mobile orders and deliveries were through the roof, drive thru was wrapped around the building and two accidents in our parking lot," the post continued.

Starbucks' foot traffic had returned to normal in three New York City locations NBC News visited on Friday afternoon. Four customers told NBC News they had no issues ordering in person. The chain continued ahead with a $3 drink deal between noon and 6 p.m.

Reporting from Los Angeles International Airport

People are pretty jovial at Los Angeles International Airport despite delays and cancellations that continue to snarl travel due to today's IT issues.

Some people said they had been waiting hours in an effort to change flights and find a way to their destination. The line to rebook for United Airlines is long, snaking out of the airport where United employees are handing out bottles of water.

AUSTIN, Texas — The internet outages forced Texas to close all of its driver’s license offices across the state, and New York’s Department of Motor Vehicles couldn’t process transactions online and in its offices Friday morning.

The Texas Department of Public Safety operates driver’s license offices in most of the state’s 254 counties. The agency issues, renews and updates driver licenses or state ID cards and provides driver education courses.

The department said in a statement that “there is no current estimate” on when the offices will reopen.

In New York, the DMV said that by Friday afternoon, some systems had been restored and that it could begin performing online transactions. However, some in-person services were still offline.

At least three of its DMV offices closed for the day because of the outage, according to the agency’s website.