Aircraft Cabin Management

1,000 flights cancelled as software glitch causes air travel chaos

photo_camera Manchester Airport T3 (file picture)

Problems with an overnight software update has caused thousands of flights to be delayed or cancelled around the globe.

A reported 1000 flights have been cancelled so far, with delays on many more.

The FAA has said that major US carriers including American, Delta, Spirit and United have asked for a ground stop for all flights.

German airports are also affected, with Berlin Brandenburg reporting a high number of cancellations.

“Since around 7:00 a.m. this morning, operational processes at Berlin Brandenburg Airport have been affected by IT problems at an external provider with worldwide consequences. Passenger handling continued with some restrictions. Departures took place with restrictions. There are still waiting times. Unfortunately, some flights had to be cancelled by the airlines. The airport’s systems have been restarted and we are gradually returning to normal operations,” the airport said in a statement.

The software causing the issue is from IT security company Crowdstrike and it affects computers with Windows-based systems. A statement from Crowdstrike says that the issue has been identified.

“Crowdstrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” said the company . “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.

In the UK, July 19 was set to be the busiest days for air travel since before the pandemic. However, the outage has led to crowded airports and frustrated passengers.

A statement from Manchester Airport said: “The global IT problems are affecting some of our airlines this morning. That means some processes like check-in and boarding are being carried out manually and are taking longer than usual for those airlines”. The airport added that passengers are advised to check with their airlines before travelling to the terminals.

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