Airports fill with long lines and broken blue screens following cancellations and delays due to global IT outage

Airports devolved into scenes of chaos early Friday after ground stops were issued due to a massive IT outage felt across the globe. 

Long lines, crowded gates and agitated passengers became common scenes at major airports. At John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Los Angeles International Airport, monitors usually displaying flight departure times were replaced with malfunctioning blue screens.

Over 1,500 flights were delayed within, into or out of the U.S. as of 7:30 a.m., and nearly 1,000 were canceled, according to FlightAware data. Globally, there have been nearly 19,000 delays and over 1,600 cancellations, according to the tracker.  

American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, the biggest carriers in the U.S., all issued ground stops early Friday morning.

Delta said in a statement, “All Delta flights are paused as we work through a vendor technology issue,” and by 8 a.m. said it “has resumed some flight departures,” meanwhile United said, “While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports.”

American said as of 5 a.m., “we have been able to safely re-establish our operation.”

The outage, affecting major businesses, police forces, public transport and banks, was caused by an information technology glitch due to an issue with the Microsoft cloud. Microsoft said shortly before 7 a.m. that the underlying cause was fixed, but “residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services.” 

Microsoft said another issue is the “CrowdStrike Falcon agent,” a cybersecurity platform used by businesses globally that is separate from Microsoft. Crowdstrike chief executive George Kurtz said the company is working with customers “impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” while noting, “this is not a security incident or cyberattack.”

Airports also warned of flight delays and cancellations, including Tampa International Airport, Denver International Airport, and Belfast International Airport in Northern Ireland.

The outage is now a test of patience for passengers as airports fill with extremely long lines.

Colby Black, 45, took the delays at John F. Kennedy International Airport in stride, even though he wasn’t sure when his rescheduled flight to Los Angeles would take off.

“It says 8 a.m. on the board, but 9 a.m. on my app, so who knows,” he said of the flight, which was originally set to depart at 6 a.m.

“I’m just tired. I want to sleep,” said Black, who woke up at 3 a.m. “But otherwise, yeah, it happens… There’s not much I can do about it. If I can’t affect it, why bother?”

Samantha C., 35, who was at JFK with her infant son said hadn’t slept the night before.

“I’m still up, running on no sleep,” said the mother, who was seated at an airport barstool beside a heavy pour of chilled white wine. She wasn’t originally planning to order a pre-flight drink.

“Hell no. I got to the airport at 4 o’clock this morning,” she said.

But her 7:05 a.m. flight to Florida was delayed three hours, causing major headaches for both her and the family members who were set to pick her up.

In Paris, which sees a flurry of tourists this time of year and is expecting even more with the upcoming Olympics, the Paris Airport Authority which manages the fourteen civil airports and airfields in the area said Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and Paris-Orly Airport were seeing slowdowns, delays and suspension of some flights.