Global tech outage slows travel at Philadelphia International Airport
PHILADELPHIA - Travelers in Philadelphia and around the world experienced widespread delays as part of a Microsoft outage that also disrupted banks, media outlets and companies on Friday.
Hoards of travelers crowded Philadelphia International Airport on Friday morning, with more than a dozen disruptions reported at the airport, and over 1,200 cancelations nationwide. The FAA said the airlines United, American, Delta and Allegiant had all been grounded.
United, in a statement posted on X, said it began resuming some flights by mid-morning, but residual disruptions are expected throughout the day Friday. The airline said it has issued a waiver to make it easier for customers to change their travel plans via their website.
Delta issued a similar statement on X, saying it also began resuming flights and offered travel waivers to those impacted. American, meanwhile, said it was able to "safely re-establish our operation" around 5 a.m.
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"Last night, Frontier had some issues impacting their flights and early this morning they seemed to be back up and running, but then it started hitting other airlines," Heather Redfern, an airport spokesperson, told FOX 29.
"American, Delta and United were in a ground stop earlier this morning, American went back to service at about 5 a.m., they are resuming their operations just like United but it will take time to get back up and running on a regular schedule."
Redfern expects the outage to cause a "snowball effect" as crews scramble to clear the logjam of flights, which she says could take days to resolve. The airport is urging travelers to keep tabs on flights through their airlines and encouraging people to come to the airport despite the disruptions.
By early afternoon, the airport reported that all impacted airlines have continued operations. Still, 94 flights into and out of Philadelphia were canceled and over 179 have been delayed, airport officials said.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack — and that a fix was on the way. It added that the problem happened when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
The Associated Press contributed to this report