Jul 31, 2024 06:00:00

What is the impact of the CrowdStrike outage that caused Windows to go blue screen around the world on the aviation industry?

The large-scale CrowdStrike outage that occurred on July 19, 2024 (Japan time) has

reportedly affected 8.5 million Windows terminals, causing severe damage such as rendering a huge number of systems in the aviation industry and hospitals inoperable. Software engineer John Weisman explains the impact of CrowdStrike's large-scale outage on the aviation industry.

CrowdStrike's Impact on Aviation - heavymeta.org
https://heavymeta.org/2024/07/28/crowdstrikes-impact-on-aviation.html

The large-scale CrowdStrike outage that occurred on July 19, 2024 is believed to have been

caused by the distribution of problematic files during an update. CrowdStrike is a security company that operates worldwide, with private companies and government agencies as clients, and in the United States, a large-scale outage caused numerous flight cancellations and delays.

Below is a visualization of the 12-hour traffic volume of American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines on the day of the outage using Flight Radar. After the outage, we can see that the volume of aircraft traffic gradually decreased.

12-hour timelapse of American Airlines, Delta, and United plane traffic after what was likely the biggest IT outage in history forced a nationwide ground stop of the three airlines. pic.twitter.com/wwcQeiEtVe

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) July 19, 2024

It was also reported that the number of flights on July 19, 2024 was down by up to 31% compared to the week before, on July 12. The decline was particularly steep between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. local time, with only 261 flights operating compared to 378 on the previous Friday.

Wiseman also provided statistics by airline, with Delta reporting that 1,087 flights were canceled during the outage, a 46% decrease from the previous week.

Since the CrowdStrike update was released in the United States at 4:09 a.m., the number of flights operated has dropped significantly from the previous week, with almost no flights operating between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m.

Like Delta, United Airlines' flight numbers on July 19th were also down from the previous week, with 596 fewer flights than the previous week.

However, it was reported that flights between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. were at a higher rate than the previous week, indicating that Delta was less affected by the outage.

Below is the trend in the number of American Airlines flights. This is a decrease of 376 flights from the previous week.

Although not as bad as Delta, American Airlines was also significantly affected by CrowdStrike's massive outage.

Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines was largely unaffected by the CrowdStrike outage.

All flights were canceled around 9am, but have been operating as normal since then.

The percentage of flights by airline compared to the week before the outage is as follows. Delta Airlines was down 46%, United Airlines was down 36%, American Airlines was down 16%, while Southwest Airlines was up 3%. According to Wiseman, the number of flights of Southwest Airlines during the outage increased by 101 flights compared to the previous week.

According to ABC News , an overseas media outlet, Southwest Airlines was hardly affected by this large-scale outage because it did not use CrowdStrike.

ABC News explained why CrowdStrike's outage had such a devastating effect on Delta: 'Individual computers had to be manually fixed, and Delta has a huge number of digital devices, so it may have taken a significant amount of time to restore.'