EDINBURGH/MADRID/BALTIMORE – Air passengers around the world faced delays, cancellations, and problems checking in as airports and airlines were caught up in a massive IT outage that also affected industries ranging from banks to media companies.

Some airlines and airports said they were back online, with the US government holding out hopes that the transportation system would be back to normal by Saturday, July 20.

Out of over 110,000 scheduled commercial flights on Friday, 2,691 have been cancelled globally so far and more are expected to be called off, according to data from global aviation analytics firm Cirium.

In Edinburgh, a Reuters witness said boarding pass scanners carried a “server offline message,” with the airport saying passengers shouldn’t travel to the airport without checking their flight status online first.

Elsewhere, airports and airlines advised customers to arrive earlier than normal for flights. Analysts said the outage was likely tied to a glitch in Microsoft software used globally.

The aviation sector is hit particularly hard due to its sensitivity to timings. Airlines rely on a closely coordinated schedule often run by air traffic control. Just one delay of a few minutes can throw off a flight schedule for take-offs and landings for an airport and airline for the rest of the day.

Microsoft said users might be unable to access various Office 365 apps and services due to a “configuration change in a portion of our Azure-backed workloads”.

Hong Kong International Airport said a Microsoft outage was affecting several airlines and it had switched to manual check-in, but flight operations had not been affected. Singapore’s Changi airport also said check-ins were being handled manually.

Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike said it was working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Microsoft Windows hosts.

Chaos

Airlines across the United States, Asia and Europe, including major carriers such as Ryanair, Delta Air Lines and Air India, said they had either faced delays or disruption.

Even airlines that weren’t directly affected said they would have to grapple with delays due to the global nature of the disruption.

The outage sparked chaos for passengers on what was one of the busiest travel days of the year in Europe as schools broke up for holiday.

At Madrid-Barajas Airport, passengers complained of queues and a lack of information.

“Nobody was around to tell us where we could check in when we arrived… so different groups queued in different places and then in the end someone, after a bottleneck of people was formed, told us to come here,” Ana Rodriguez, a tourist from Mexico, said.

In India, airlines at New Delhi airport’s Terminal 3 were giving handwritten boarding passes to flyers, while airport staff were using white-boards to display gate information for flights, according to an official for the airport.

At Baltimore airport, Rose Geffrard, 37, a nurse travelling with her six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter to a cousin’s wedding in Boston, said she spent nearly two hours waiting in a long line to get paper tickets as Spirit Airlines personnel looked up their names on a paper manifest.

Airline personnel had to page through printed passenger manifest before issuing paper tickets and then consulted a printed seating chart to make sure they were not double assigning seats. The lengthy process led to long waits.

Several US carriers including American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta issued ground stops for all their flights early on Friday due to communication problems, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Slow resolution

American Airlines later said it had resumed operations. Delta said it has resumed some flight departures, but warned of additional delays and cancellations. FAA’s data showed Delta’s operations in Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Salt Lake City were still impacted.

There are more than 27,000 flights scheduled on Friday from the US, carrying up to 3.7 million passengers, Cirium’s data showed.

Transportation system issues appeared to be resolving and would be hopefully be back to normal by Saturday, said US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, adding that the FAA did not appear impacted.

In Europe, Spanish carrier Iberia said it had managed to avoid flight cancellations.

But Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, Berlin airport, London Gatwick, Edinburgh airport and others said they were impacted by the outage, with flight tracking service FlightRadar24 citing Schiphol as the airport with the worst disruptions globally.

A Schiphol spokesperson said flights to and from the airport had been affected, adding it was not yet clear how many and that travellers were advised to contact their airline.

Compensation questions

In Europe, airlines are required to compensate passengers for delays of more than three hours but it was unclear to what extent they would be held legally responsible for the outage.

“The airlines will have to prove that this was in fact an extraordinary circumstance,” a spokesperson for European consumer organization BEUC said.

“If this is the case, passengers will not receive compensation, according to EU law.”

Major US airlines in 2022 committed to providing meals for customers delayed by three hours and hotel rooms for stranded passengers if prompted by issues under the airlines’ control.

Unlike Europe, there is no legal requirement that airlines in the United States compensate passengers for lengthy delays. It is also not clear if the IT issue will be deemed an airline caused delay or not. – Rappler.com