More than 4,000 flights cancelled globally due to IT outage

Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, says more than 4,000 flights were cancelled globally due to information technology (IT) outage.

According to reports on Friday, the firm said nearly 4 percent of all scheduled flights globally have been cancelled due to the disruption.

“4,295 flights had been cancelled as of 12 p.m. ET,” the firm said.

Cirium said in the United Kingdom (UK) 4.6 percent of all scheduled departures or 143 flights, have been cancelled, while around 140 inbound arrivals have also been cancelled.

Businesses worldwide grappled with a major IT outage earlier today, as operations of airlines, financial services, and broadcast stations were disrupted.

The incident affected airlines’ operations in many countries, including Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Australia.

The outage came as cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike, experienced a major disruption earlier today following an issue with a recent tech update.

George Kurtz, CrowdStrike chief executive officer (CEO), has since said that the company is “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” stressing that Mac and Linux hosts are not affected.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” he said.

Kurtz urged customers to remain vigilant in ensuring they engage with official CrowdStrike representatives as they seek support.