[Update, July 20, 10:15 a.m.] Fallout from Friday's global IT glitch continued into Saturday. For July 20, there were about 104,000 flights scheduled, and as of 8 a.m. ET, 1,848 had already been canceled, or about 1.8 percent of the schedule, according to Cirium.
The United States had the most cancellations so far with nearly 850, about 3.5 percent of scheduled flights. Delta had the most at 548, which is 13 percent of its scheduled flights, followed by United with 199, 5 percent of its schedule. American by 8 a.m. ET had canceled 44 flights, less than 1 percent of its schedule.
As of 9:15 a.m., according to data from FlightAware, there were 1,386 cancellations and 17,020 delays so far today. Cancellations in the U.S. were at 1,008 with 1,532 delays, with Delta and United in the top two spots. The Atlanta airport remained the airport with the highest number of both cancellations and delays by origin and by destination.
The number of global cancellations on Friday as of 6 p.m. ET was 5,582, about 5 percent of the schedule, according to Cirium. For some U.S. carriers, only about 25 percent of flights left within one hour of their scheduled departure time.
FlightAware had the Friday total of global cancellations as 5,168, with 45,812 delays. Cancellations within, into or out of the U.S. reached 3,400 with 12,735 delays.
On Friday evening, Delta Business said in an email that it had extended its travel waiver to cover flights scheduled for both July 19 and 20. The carrier also noted that it was providing meal vouchers and hotel accommodations to affected travelers.
United also on Friday evening noted it had extended its waiver to July 20 and that "while we had to cancel and delay far more flights than we ever want to, we are poised to return to a near-normal operation on Saturday," said chief operations officer Toby Enqvist in a statement.
[Update, July 19, 3:45 p.m.] A Cirium update as of 3:30 p.m. ET Friday showed that Delta had canceled 1,176 of its flights today, 23.5 percent of those scheduled. United canceled 515, which is 12 percent of its schedule, and American canceled 454, which is 7.5 percent.
In all, 2,382 U.S. flights had been canceled or nearly 9 percent of scheduled flights. Globally, 5,117 flights had been canceled, representing 4.6 percent of total flight scheduled, according to Cirium.
Per FlightAware data as of 3:40 p.m. ET, total global cancellations were at 4,086 with 36,131 delays. Within, into or out of the United States, there were 2,524 cancellations and 8,164 delays. The top three carriers for those cancellations and delays were Delta, United and American, in that order.
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta had the most canceled and delayed flights, for both airport by origin and by destination, according to FlightAware.
[Update, 11:50 a.m.] American has issued a travel waiver in response to today's CrowdStrike outage. The change fee is waived for July 19 flights scheduled to depart from or arrive at 11 airports, if the affected passenger can travel by July 25, 2024, the origin and destination city are not changed, and they rebook in the same cabin or pay the difference, according to the carrier. Changes must be booked by July 19.
The 11 airports included are Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, New York Kennedy, New York LaGuardia, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Washington Reagan.
Aviation analytics company Cirium reported that as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, 1,692 flights in the U.S. had been canceled, about 6.3 percent of scheduled flights. Delta had canceled 768 flights, 15.4 percent of its schedule. American had canceled 385, 6.4 percent of its schedule, and United had canceled 359, 8.4 percent of its schedule. About 37 percent of flights in the U.S. that have departed today have had a delay of at least 30 minutes, according to Cirium.
As of 11:45 a.m., FlightAware data showed that global flight delays were at 29,336 flight and cancellations were at 3,217 flights. For flights within, into or out of the U.S., there were 5,373 delays and 1,979 cancellations.
[Update, 9:10 a.m.] As of 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, Delta posted on X, formerly Twitter, that it had resumed some flights and issued a travel waiver.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium also shared that as of 8 a.m. ET, there were 2,691 flights canceled globally out of the roughly 110,000 scheduled for Friday. Of the more than 27,000 flights had been scheduled to depart the United States today, 1,017 had been canceled, about 4.2 percent of the schedule.
American had 6,026 flights scheduled with 307 cancellations as of 8 a.m., Delta had 5,002 scheduled with 508 cancellations, and United had 4,281 scheduled with 137 cancellations, according to Cirium. These figures include both domestic and international flights.
On-time departures also have been affected, with about 62 percent of flights departing within 14:59 minutes of the scheduled push-back time from the gate, according to Cirium.
[Original report, 7:20 a.m.] Airlines around the world—as well as medical service
providers, banks, media companies and other businesses—have had their
operations negatively affected because of a global technical outage many
companies reported on Friday.
American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines were
among the carriers that issued ground stops earlier Friday morning. American
posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that as of 5 a.m. Eastern Time, it had
been able to "safely re-establish our operation."
United, at around 6:30 a.m., posted that some flights had
resumed as the company continued to work to restore systems. The carrier issued
a waiver "to make it easter to change your travel plans" on the
United website or app.
Delta at 6:24 a.m. posted on its website that "due to a
vendor technology issue," it was working to resume operations "as
quickly as possible." The carrier also was working to issue a travel
waiver to allow customers scheduled to travel Friday to manage changes to their
itinerary via the carrier's website or app.
Friday's outage allegedly was caused by a software update
issued by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm whose software is used by companies
around the world to protect against hackers and outside breaches, according to
a report
in The New York Times. According
to the Associated Press, the “disruption appeared piecemeal and was
apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based
services.” This issue follows a Microsoft outage that happened Thursday and
impacted some Microsoft clients in the central United States, according to the
report.
As of 6:50 a.m. Friday, FlightAware data showed that 1,324
flights globally had been cancelled and 17,326 were delayed. American had the
largest number of canceled flights at 244 or 6 percent of its schedule, with
115 delayed. United was third with 128 or 4 percent of scheduled flights
canceled and 127 delayed, and Delta fourth with 107 or 2 percent of flights
canceled and 118 delayed.