Viral timelapse reveals US air traffic crash as IT outage strands passengers from America to Berlin, Hong Kong…
Video captures chaos of global IT outage affecting major airlines, healthcare sectors. CrowdStrike's tech update failure leads to complete air traffic shutdown.
A viral timelapse video has dramatically captured the scale of disruption caused by a recent global IT outage, highlighting the complete collapse of air traffic systems. The footage reveals a chaotic 12-hour period where flights across major airlines were grounded, leaving passengers stranded from America to Berlin, Hong Kong, and beyond.
A failed tech update by CrowdStrike has resulted in the complete shutdown of major healthcare, airline, and banking sectors around the world. While the company claims the issue has been identified, it remains to be seen how long it will take to fix it so that normal operations can resume.
Watch US skies empty through the global outage
This 12-hour timelapse provides a detailed depiction of the complete air traffic operations of American Airlines, Delta, and United flights throughout the mainland USA during the massive global tech outage on Friday. This event led to all three airlines implementing a nationwide ground stop. Passengers at John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport were among those affected by this unprecedented and extensive internet disruption, resulting in numerous individuals being stranded.
Tech expert Troy Hunt, an Australian Microsoft regional manager, tweeted early in the chaos, “It’s not too soon to declare this the largest IT outage in history.” At the same time, George Kurtz, the boss of CrowdStrike, said that the company was working hard to sort out problems for customers whose systems were hit by a bug in a recent update for Windows users. He also promised that they'd have a solution soon.
America to Berlin, Hong Kong, Portland passengers stranded
Twitter is packed with videos going viral that show people getting really frustrated: airports crowded with passengers stuck, super long lines everywhere, and the internet meltdown, making things even worse.
Larger airports such as LaGuardia have had to cancel more than 60 flights, with over 100 others delayed, and JFK in New York has had to stop dozens of flights. The New York Times is reporting that flights across the country are delayed by about 650, with 100 of them already canceled. The summer travel season is in full swing, and this issue is causing headaches for travellers facing long waits, flight changes, and uncertainty about what's happening.
“The F.A.A. is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. “Several airlines have requested F.A.A. assistance with ground stops for their fleets until the issue is resolved.”
American Airlines jumped on social media on Friday morning, saying sorry for a tech issue with a supplier that was messing up a bunch of airlines. “American is working with the vendor to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” the airline said in a statement.