Major Airline Flights Grounded Due To Communication Issues
The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded flights from multiple major airlines due to communication issues. As of early this morning, flights for Delta, United, American Airlines, and Allegiant have all been grounded, regardless of their destination.
The grounding of these flights is a result of a Microsoft outage that occurred Thursday which resulted in halted service for Frontier Airlines. The FAA is asking air traffic controllers to alert airborne pilots that airline are experiencing communication issues. Flights already airborne will stay in the air, but there are no flights taking off.
According to ABC News, IT outages have been reported across the world. Airlines, banks, and media companies have experienced ongoing disruptions. American Airlines acknowledged a “technical issue” with CrowdStrike and said they were working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
United Airlines also released a statement addressing a “third party software outage” that is affecting computer systems worldwide.
Again, this issue appears to be worldwide, with Melbourne Airport in Australia noting a “global technology issue.” Other places reporting issues include Berlin Airport in Germany, the London Stock Exchange, Google Cloud, Microsoft, and Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom.
Microsoft released a statement addressing issues impacting its users and that they are investigating. Meanwhile, CrowdStrike, a U.S. cybersecurity company, has taken responsibility for the error and are working to correct it.
