Travel misery continues as global IT outage 'could take weeks to clear' - with over 5,000 flights cancelled worldwide

20 July 2024, 08:45

Travel misery is set to continue into the weekend as experts warned Friday's global IT outage could take weeks to clear.

Flight delays and cancellations are among the disruption expected to continue after a defective update rolled out by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike knocked many offline around the world on Friday.

A fix was deployed for the bug in the afternoon, with George Kurtz, the CEO of Crowdstrike, warning it would take "some time" for systems to be fully restored.

Mr Kurtz said he wanted to "sincerely apologise" for the disruption to travel, healthcare and businesses.

He added: "Nothing is more important to me than the trust and confidence that our customers and partners have put into CrowdStrike.

"As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again."

Airports across the UK - including London Gatwick, Heathrow Airport, Manchester Airport and Belfast International Airport - stressed that passengers should check with airlines for any delays or cancellations before travelling over the weekend.

A spokesperson for London Gatwick said: "Following earlier global issues, our airport IT systems are now operating as normal and we expect the majority of our flights to operate as usual tomorrow.

"Some delays and cancellations will however continue this evening and over the weekend. We strongly advise passengers to check with their airline for the latest updates."

A spokesperson for Manchester Airport said: "Check-in and boarding for the affected airlines are being carried out manually and are taking longer than normal resulting in some long queues at check-in.

"Some flights may be impacted by delays and schedules have been affected by issues caused by the effects of the global IT outage at airports all over the world. This means some flights could be cancelled by airlines at short notice."

It comes after 167 flights scheduled to depart UK airports were axed on Friday, with others delayed.

Meanwhile, 171 flights due to land in the UK were cancelled following the technical glitch.

While Crowdstrike has told users it has fixed the main cause of the mass outage, experts have warned delays, cancellations and other bugs could take "weeks".

Industry expert Adam Leon Smith of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, warned that it could even take "weeks" for all computers and systems to be fully restored.

"The fix will have to be applied to many computers around the world. So if computers are getting blue screens and endless loops, it could be more difficult and take days and weeks," he said.

Professor Ciaran Martin, the founding chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), also said it was hard to estimate how long it would take to recover from the outage.

"The underlying problem is fixed and the fixes are being implemented," he said.

"Some industries can recovery quickly. But others like aviation will have long backlogs. That said, I'd be surprised if we were still facing serious problems this time next week."

Read more: Global IT outage LIVE: CrowdStrike outage could be ‘biggest cyber incident in history’ as GP surgeries and banks hit

Andrew Peck, a cybersecurity expert at Loughborough University, said that some of the critical infrastructure affected by the outage might be in remote areas and will need to be accessed.

Hundreds of thousands of machines would need to be visited and fixed in person by IT workers, he told CNN.

This could take "thousands of hours and millions, potentially billions of dollars," he warned.

Earlier, researcher Kevin Beaumont explained how the systems would need to be started in ‘Safe Mode’, to remove the faulty update.

He added: "This is incredibly time-consuming and will take organisations days to do at scale. Essentially we have one of the world’s highest impact IT incidents caused by a cyber-security vendor."

Mr Kurtz previously told NBC it was the firm's "mission" to make sure every one of its customers recovers from the outage.

"We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies," he said.

“Many of the customers are rebooting the system, and it’s coming up, and it’ll be operational because we fixed it on our end,” he said.

“We’re just trying to sort out where the negative interaction was,” he added of the buggy update that affected Windows PCs.

Crowdstrike said it has issued a fix that will be applied to each device separately. But some have claimed it to be ineffective.

Microsoft has even advised users to restart their devices as many as 15 times in a bid to repair the issue.

Over 5,000 flights were cancelled worldwide as of Friday evening UK time, according to analytics firm Cirium.

"This equates to 3.9 per cent of all scheduled flights globally [with] 143 flights cancelled departing UK airports so far (4.6 per cent of all scheduled departures), with a further 142 inbound arrivals cancelled," they added.

Airline Ryanair has even taken the step of sending travellers home from airports as flights continue to remain grounded.

Ryanair told passengers: "If your flight has been cancelled, we kindly request that you leave the airport as the IT outage means we cannot currently assist passengers at the airport."

The chaos caused by Friday’s outage has underscored the need for stronger protections in the future, experts said.

It was the busiest day of the year so far for UK air travel with 3,214 departing flights as thousands of families embark on summer holidays.

Several US carriers grounded flights, including United, American Airlines and Delta.

Meanwhile train service information website National Rail Enquiries warned passengers of "widespread IT issues across the entire network", although most train services ran as scheduled.

South Western Railway said all its ticket vending machines had stopped working due to IT issues.

Thousands of GP practices were also affected, with NHS England confirming there has been an issue with the EMIS Web system, which is understood to be used by about 60% of practices in England.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting wrote: "This is having a particular impact on GP appointments and electronic prescribing.

"Please bear with your local GPs if they're grappling with this on top of normal pressures."

A string of ambulance services reported seeing increased demand on their 999 and NHS 111 services, including London Ambulance Service (LAS), South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS), South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) and North East Ambulance Service (NEAS).

LAS received a third more calls by 2pm on Friday than it would usually receive in a 24-hour period, according to its chief executive.

Daniel Elkeles said: "Following the global IT outage that has impacted some NHS services across the capital, our call handlers and ambulance crews are incredibly busy with huge increases in the number of calls to both our 999 and 111 services.

"In fact, by 2pm today, we had received more than 3,000 999 calls and 3,000 calls to our 111 services - this is a third higher than we would usually receive in a full 24 hour period."

Matt Hull, Global Head of Threat Intelligence at global cyber security organisation, NCC Group told LBC: “Organisations across all sectors and of all sizes must focus on enhancing their cyber resilience.

“This involves a multifaceted approach that prioritises the development and implementation of comprehensive incident management plans.

“Regular security assessments are essential to identify and address vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. Continuous monitoring and testing of systems help ensure that defences are up-to-date and effective.

“Investing in advanced security technologies is also vital. Tools such as intrusion detection systems, firewalls, and encryption can provide additional layers of protection.”