Flight delays and cancellations out of airports in New England were piling up on Friday amid a widespread global technology outage impacting Microsoft 365 apps and services that prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to ground flights from several major airlines.
Flights on United, American, Delta and Allegiant were all grounded as of Friday morning, the Associated Press reported. At Boston Logan International Airport, 57 flights in and out of the airport were delayed and 19 had been canceled, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.
At Bradley International Airport in Hartford, Conn., 6 flights in and out of the airport were delayed and five were canceled.
- Read more: Widespread technology outage disrupts flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world
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. The company said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
But hours after the problem was first detected, the disarray continued — and escalated.
Long lines formed at airports in the U.S., Europe and Asia as airlines lost access to check-in and booking services at a time when many travelers are heading away on summer vacations.
DownDectector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected — although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services.
Cyber expert James Bore said real harm would be caused by the outage because systems we’ve come to rely on at critical times are not going to be available. Hospitals, for example, will struggle to sort out appointments and those who need care may not get it.
“There are going to be deaths because of this. It’s inevitable,’’ Bore said. “We’ve got so many systems tied up with this.”
Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
