Flight troubles linger following global tech outage — hospitals, businesses work to get back on track
Airports, hospitals, government offices and businesses continued working to get back on track Saturday following Friday’s global tech outage that caused widespread chaos.
More than 100 flights were delayed or cancelled at the metro region’s three airports following Friday’s massive crash, caused when US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike sent out a faulty overnight software update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
Area hospitals and the MTA said they were mostly back in business, but the worldwide effort to recover from the massive crash was slow and ongoing, and it could be several days before the global flight system returns to normal.
As of noon Saturday, 132 flights at John F. Kennedy International Airport, 232 at LaGuardia Airport and 251 at Newark Liberty International Airport had been cancelled in a 24-hour span, according to flight tracking service FlightAware.
Even the flights that were getting in the air were backlogged, with 119 delays across the region’s three airports Saturday afternoon.
Worldwide, nearly 23,750 flights were delayed or cancelled, according to FlightAware.
Global IT issues could continue to affect flights through the weekend, the Federal Aviation Administration said on X.
And while airlines including American and United are issuing waivers for those hit with related delays and cancellations, it will be days before the system is completely unsnarled.
On the rails, some MTA travel information screens went dark due to the software glitch, but the agency said as of Friday evening, all arrival information for trains and buses was restored across the system.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, which paused any procedures requiring anesthesia amid the outage, later said that “most” of its systems and procedures had resumed.
One hospital worker told The Post that many surgeries were delayed as a result of the crash, but added, “All of our patients are fine. It wasn’t, like, complete chaos.”
The hospital’s scheduling system was down, another staffer added, but could be accessed using Google Chrome. “So that went on as usual,” he said.
Five out of eight computers used for scheduling at NYC Health + Hospitals / Bellevue were down, said one source, but employees were able to get by with the three working ones.
Patient care at many of the city’s major hospitals was unaffected, officials said in a press conference on Friday.
Governor Hochul said on Saturday reported “significant progress” in restoring the affected systems. “Thousands of staff across dozens of agencies are working around the clock throughout the weekend to continue to remediate systems,” she said in a statement.
“Critical life safety services, including 911, remain operational, and New Yorkers should continue to call 911,” she said in a statement. “I have also directed that forbearance be granted for those that were unable to conduct business with the state due to the outage, such as individuals needing DMV license renewals.”
Some upstate Department of Motor Vehicle locations closed on Friday due to the outage and though online transactions resumed, some in-person services remained unavailable, the agency said.
Though the global disruption was not a cyber attack, CrowdStrike head George Kurtz and agencies across the world warned of “bad actors,” taking advantage of the crash.
The federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency was among those that warned that scammers “continue to leverage the outage to conduct malicious activity, including phishing attempts.”
Governments from the UK to Australia also issued advisories, telling tech users to be on guard for fake emails, phone calls and websites pushing “fixes” to the issues caused by the crash.
“We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement apologizing for the outage. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives.”
South Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres called for the Department of Homeland Security and CISA to investigate the circumstances that led to the outage.
“Both the US Congress and the public are entitled to a full accounting of what went wrong with CrowdStrike’s software and what can be done to prevent such a disruptive event from repeating itself in the future,” Torres said in a post on X.
“The impacts — ranging from the grounding of flights to the shutdown of emergency response systems — are too serious to ignore, and we ignore them at our own peril,” he added.
