Some Canadian flights and media services have been disrupted amid a global technology outage that has grounded planes and impacted banks as well as hospitals across the world.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said on Friday that the problem occurred after a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows and the issue was being resolved.
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack,” the U.S. based-firm said in a statement on its website.
“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
CrowdStrike said that Mac and Linux hosts have not been affected.
As of 6:15 a.m. ET, 21 flights that were scheduled to depart Canada were cancelled, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company. This does not include inbound flights to Canada.
Toronto-based Porter Airlines has cancelled all flights until 12 p.m. ET Friday and said in a statement that “further delays and cancellations are possible.”
“Passengers cannot be rebooked while systems are offline,” Porter Airlines said.
Toronto Pearson International Airport said that the third-party IT outage was continuing to affect some airlines.
“Travellers may notice the terminals are busier than normal this morning as we anticipate connecting 135,000 passengers today,” it said in a post on X.
A spokesperson for the Calgary Airport Authority told Global News that they were “expecting some delays and cancellations” at YYC because of the global outage, but so far there has been “minimal impact.”
Air Canada told Global News in an emailed statement there was no “major impact” on its operations and is monitoring the situation closely.
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NAV Canada, the country’s air navigation service providers, said its systems were not affected.
“We are working closely with our industry partners to understand how we can best support their operations and passengers,” it said on X.
Passengers are pictures travelling through Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on July 19, 2024.
Rob Ford/Global News
Calgary-based WestJet released a statement saying it was expecting some delays across its network amid the global disruption.
“At this time, there has been no direct impact to WestJet’s IT systems or operations and any flight cancellations across our network are unrelated to the CrowdStrike outage,” WestJet said.
DownDectector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected — although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services.
Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
The outage has also impacted banks and media outlets in different countries.
The Canadian Press said that the CrowdStrike Windows outage had disrupted some of its services, including wire content, all audio and photo delivery.
On Friday, news outlets in Australia — where telecommunications were severely affected — were pushed off air for hours.
Banks in South Africa and New Zealand reported outages to their payment system or websites and apps.
The Canadian Banking Association said “any current impact on banking services would be temporary.”
“Like many other companies, banks in Canada are reviewing the situation based on updates from their technology partners,” said CMA spokesperson Maggie Cheung,
“Canadians can be reassured that our country has a well-protected banking system. “
— with files from The Associated Press
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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