Global IT outage halts flights at MSP airport

A major cyber outage has hit businesses, hospitals, broadcasters across the world, and it’s disrupting air travel across the globe, including at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

By 8 a.m., nearly 100 flights in and out of the Twin Cities had already been called off, and the number was likely to grow, said airport spokesman Jeff Lea.

“Just like with winter storms, if flights are canceled in other parts of the country, they don’t make it here,” he said. “We could see the domino effect.”

Lines at check-in counters and security checkpoints were already long in Terminal 1, Lea said. He advised travelers to communicate directly with their airline about their flight status as information displayed on airport flight monitors is “unreliable.”

Hometown airline Sun Country has canceled all flights scheduled to depart before 7 a.m. The airline said it is starting to resume some flights “but we are expecting additional cancellations today. Our ticket counter agents and customer reps cannot rebook travel now, because of downed systems.” Travelers should check their emails for updates, the airline said.

Delta Air Lines, the dominant carrier at MSP, said it resumed some departures after halting all flights earlier Friday. The airline had canceled 371 flights nationwide due to the outage, including 56 at MSP.

The tech disruption has not affected Metro Transit buses or light-rail trains, according to spokesman Drew Kerr.

More than 1,200 flights at airports across the country had been called off, according to the flight tracking website flightaware.com. More than 2,100 worldwide were canceled and more than 21,000 flights were delayed, the website said.

“Multiple airlines are reporting system outages that are impacting flights at MSP and nationwide. Please check with your airline for the latest flight status before leaving for the airport,” MSP said in a statement on X.

United and American said they also were impacted by the outage, but were slowly resuming operations. Lea said some flights operating as normal at MSP, but that it is an airline-by-airline situation. Frontier Airlines said access to check-in, boarding passes and some flights may be impacted.

“As we work to fully restore these systems, some flights are resuming. Many customers traveling today may experience delays,” United said in a statement.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it is “closely monitoring” the cyber outage

“The FAA is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines. Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops until the issue is resolved,” the agency wrote in a post on social media.

The U.S. Department of Transportation reminded passengers to use flightrights.gov to “navigate what your airline’s responsibilities are to meet your needs as a passenger.”

The mass outages affecting Microsoft systems appear to be related to a software update by the company CrowdStrike, a cyber security firm. The issue arose as the company was applying a software update which had a bug in it and had a “negative interaction,” the company’s CEO George Kurtz told NBC’s “Today” show.

“It wasn’t a cyber attack, it was related to a content update,” he told the news program. “We identified it quickly and remediated it. We are working with each and every customer to bring the back online. We are deeply sorry for the impact we have caused to customers, travelers, to anybody affected by this.”

Kurtz said the company will need to figure out what happened.

The outage impacted other industries, too. WCCO posted early Friday that its broadcast was delayed due to the tech issues.

“The Microsoft outage is delaying the broadcast of WCCO This Morning. We’re working to rectify the issue and go live on the air ASAP,” the network said shortly after 5 a.m.