Tuesday, August 6, 2024 The CrowdStrike IT outage on Friday, July 19, was a monumental event that crashed 8.5 million computers globally, affecting a wide array of critical systems. Businesses as diverse as reputed news channels, healthcare providers, and the State Bank of India faced significant disruptions.
This incident marked the largest such outage in history, surpassing the damage caused by any known hack. Though not directly related to aviation, the outage created scenes of chaos at airports, which became the most visible impact of the event. Travelers faced significant challenges during one of the busiest weekends of the peak northern summer travel season.
The outage affected systems managing booking, check-in, baggage, and crew scheduling, leading to widespread airline and airport disruptions. By mid-afternoon CET on Friday, nearly 36,000 flights had been delayed, and by the end of the weekend, around 10,000 flights had been canceled globally. Despite the disruptions, travelers showed remarkable patience, understanding that the situation was beyond the airlines’ control.
CrowdStrike worked diligently to implement fixes and restore normalcy. Importantly, safety was never compromised. Aircraft systems and air traffic control remained unaffected, and ground crews demonstrated creativity by using hand-written boarding passes and other manual documentation to keep flights moving.
It was an extraordinary day by any measure. With the benefit of hindsight, several critical.
