### U.S. Airlines Face Major Disruptions Due to IT Vendor Glitch
July 19 (Reuters) – On Friday, leading U.S. airlines, including Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, scrambled to restore operations after an IT vendor issue grounded flights nationwide, causing significant travel disruptions.
Thousands of passengers were impacted as over 1,400 flights were canceled and nearly 4,000 were delayed by 10:00 AM ET, according to FlightAware. Although Delta and United have resumed some flights, delays and cancellations are expected to continue throughout the day.
American Airlines, which also issued a ground stop notice, has since re-established operations and issued travel waivers for affected passengers. Smaller carrier Frontier Airlines reported that a “major Microsoft technical outage” briefly halted its operations. The problem originated from a defect in a CrowdStrike content update for Microsoft Windows hosts, as confirmed by CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is closely monitoring the situation, providing assistance to airlines requesting ground stops. The technical glitch also disrupted parcel delivery giants FedEx and UPS, warning of potential delivery delays across their networks.
Microsoft reported that the outage began around 6 PM ET on Thursday, affecting several Azure cloud services in the Central U.S. region, underscoring the wide-reaching impact of such technological failures on various industries.
