After Mega-IT-Fault: Worldwide flight operation resumed
According to Thailand's national airport director Keerati Kitmanawat, there are currently "no long queues at the airports, as we experienced yesterday." In Australia, operations have largely returned to normal at the airports, although Sydney Airport still reported flight delays.
At the airports in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Thailand, check-in services have been restored. In India, Indonesia, and Singapore's Changi Airport, operations resumed normally from Saturday (local time).
According to a high-ranking US government representative, "flight operations have resumed across the entire country in the US, although there are still bottlenecks."
The issue affected businesses worldwide that use Microsoft Windows operating system. According to US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, the cause was a faulty update from their antivirus program Falcon. The impact was significant: airlines and airports worldwide faced IT issues, resulting in cancelled or delayed flights. Hospitals had to reschedule surgeries, broadcasters could not transmit, and cash registers in supermarkets went down.
In Germany, the Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) was particularly affected. Flights were temporarily halted at the capital's airport. Many flights were rerouted or cancelled, while others landed and took off delayed. On Saturday, a BER spokesperson told AFP that "all our systems in handling are running smoothly and without interruptions." However, some passengers could not yet use self-service check-ins due to lingering disruptions from the airlines.
The full extent of the disruption's impact is still unknown. Reports from the Netherlands and the UK suggest that healthcare services may have been affected.
Media companies also grappled with the consequences: the British news broadcaster Sky News announced that the disruption had ended its news broadcasts on Friday morning. The Australian broadcaster ABC reported significant difficulties.
CrowdStrike announced that they had found a solution to the problem. The company's CEO George Kurtz told CNBC that he wanted to "personally apologize to every organization, every group, and every person affected." It could take several days for operations to return to normal.
According to cybersecurity expert Junade Ali from the British Engineering and Technology Alliance, the extent of the outage was "unprecedented." This disruption will "certainly go down in history," Ali stated. He noted that a similar catastrophic disruption last occurred in 2017.
- The global impact of the Mega-IT-Fault was felt in Thailand, where check-in services were affected at BER, the Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
- After the resolution of the issues, South Korea's airline industry reported smooth operations, as did their counterparts in India and Singapore.
- In the bustling city of Hong Kong, airport operations returned to normal, and flights resumed their usual schedules.
- Microsoft, the tech giant, issued a statement acknowledging the disruption caused by the faulty update to its Windows operating system.
- The United States of America was also affected by the Mega-IT-Fault, with some airports reporting minor flight delays despite resumed operations.
- The disruption extended to Asia, affecting air traffic in countries like Indonesia and Australia, where major airlines were impacted.
- Malaysian hospitals reported minor disruptions due to the Mega-IT-Fault, while Australian hospitals had to temporarily postpone surgeries due to IT issues.
- The Mega-IT-Fault even impacted businesses in the technology sector, with reports of cash registers in supermarkets going down in Singapore.
- According to Junade Ali, a cybersecurity expert from the British Engineering and Technology Alliance, the Mega-IT-Fault was the most significant IT-related disruption in Asia since 2017.
