Airlines, flight statuses still recovering from global CrowdStrike technology outage at Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports

Airlines, flight statuses still recovering from global CrowdStrike technology outage at Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports

CHICAGO– More than 1,100 flights have been canceled and 2,867 delayed in the U.S. as private and public sectors worldwide continue to be impacted by the CrowdStrike outage more than a day after it began. While many businesses appear to have recovered, the issue is not yet fully resolved.

The air travel problems also affected Chicago’s airports after the global technology outage on Friday.

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On Saturday, airlines tried to get back on track.

Saturday afternoon, 135 flights were canceled at O’Hare, but delays averaged only 15 minutes. At Midway, things were back to normal, with only four canceled flights Saturday and minimal delays.

READ MORE | Global IT outage impacts flights at Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports

According to Microsoft, the outage affected 8.5 million Windows devices, causing global chaos with airlines, banks and other disruptions. CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, is not owned by Microsoft but still runs largely on its systems.

“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impact reflects the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that manage many critical services,” Microsoft said in a statement.

The outage was caused by a faulty software update that CrowdStrike sent to computers running Microsoft Windows, which caused flight disruptions, financial services outages and hospital systems to go offline.

According to a report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency seen by ABC News, rebooting systems multiple times worked for some agencies, while others are still experiencing the problems.

Multiple U.S. government facilities have reported being unable to operate because they are unable to access multiple Microsoft 360 applications. Election-related and voter registration databases in Arizona, South Dakota, Texas and Washington state were also affected by the outage, the report said.

While American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Airlines issued global grounding halts Friday due to communications issues, TSA systems were not affected, the report said. There were at least 1,143 canceled flights in the U.S. on Saturday, far fewer than the more than 3,200 canceled on Friday.

Delta remains the airline hardest hit by the outage, with Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson International Airport still seeing the most delays and cancellations on Saturday.

American Airlines said it had “fully recovered” and canceled less than 1% of its flights today: 43 flights.

According to the DHS report, the 911 emergency response systems affected by the outage have transitioned to fully operational backup systems.

RELATED | How a Faulty CrowdStike Update Crashed Computers Around the World

On Friday morning, the first reports came in that there would be a technical failure that would cause services to go offline worldwide. This would have consequences for millions of people.

In an update Friday evening, the company said it was “actively working with customers impacted” by the issue.

Hospitals such as Mass General Brigham, which halted elective and non-emergency surgeries yesterday, said they would operate through the night and are expected to be fully operational again on Saturday.

“We are doing everything we can to restore the electronic systems that support our patient care across our system. Our teams will be working through the night to implement fixes and we currently expect to be operational on Saturday, July 20, 2024,” Mass General Brigham said in a statement late Friday.

ABC News’ Ayesha Ali and Luke Barr contributed to this report.

ABC7 Chicago contributed to this report.

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