Airlines Affected by Microsoft Outage—What Travelers Should Know

They are scenes straight out of a travel nightmare: Airline passengers, including unaccompanied minors, stranded for days in strange cities amid a cascading wave of flight cancellations—with little hope of catching a plane home in a hurry.

Budget airlines are upending many their original business plans as increased costs wreak havoc on their bottom lines.

The cruise industry has long promoted cruise vacations as seagoing alternatives to landside all-inclusive resorts—with the added benefit of hitting multiple destinations in a single trip (and only needing to unpack once). But most cruises aren’t actually all-inclusive—on the vast majority of cruise lines, there are extras available for purchase on the ship that can really mean cruisers pay twice for the same vacation: once up front, and once on board.

Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm with thousands of customers globally, admitted on Friday that a defective software update had caused the major IT outage that brought airports, banks, hospitals, media outlets, and businesses to a halt worldwide.

In the wake of a worldwide technology outage, my Sunday afternoon flight with Delta Air Lines from Boston Logan (BOS) to San Francisco (SFO) was canceled, and the next option to fly on Delta was nearly 48 hours later. I rebooked myself on United Airlines, which got me to my destination just over 12 hours later than originally scheduled—at a cost that exceeded $2,000. Thankfully, I was traveling for work and the new flight was covered as a business expense. If I was paying out of my own pocket, however, I would have submitted the new flight for reimbursement via the travel insurance coverage offered through my credit card.

If you were flying — or planned to fly — last week, your travel plans might have been snarled by an I.T. outage that kneecapped myriad industries and critical services worldwide. On Friday, July 19, alone, nearly 14 percent of the scheduled flights in the United States were canceled and 56 percent were delayed, according to Cirium, an aviation data company. In the days following, Delta Air Lines and other carriers continued to cancel and delay flights as they struggled with crews and planes out of position and the rebooking of thousands of passengers.

It’s no secret that the people of London love to queue—for non-UK folks, that means waiting in line. We are known for our obsession with order; a compulsive need to systemize everything into neat and tidy sections. So when throngs of travelers flock to the capital, some (read: many) Londoners can begin to malfunction as things get disorderly. You’ll notice an involuntary eye twitch if you stand on the wrong side of the escalator, a reflexive eye roll if you pose for a photo in a phone box, or even an audible gasp if you step into the road while looking the wrong way for oncoming traffic.

Delta Air Lines canceled around 20% of its schedule on Monday as it grapples with lingering flight disruptions that were caused by a major IT outage. 

Jul 20, 2024 • 8 min read

The mass IT outage is causing problems for everyone — even Mickey Mouse.

The real-life Y2K. “Blue Screen of Death.” The IT outage that has affected everything from Times Square billboards to payrolls has also led to a worldwide meltdown in the airline industry. 

American Airlines struck a tentative deal with its flight attendants union, ending years of contentious negotiations.