Global IT Outages Ground Flights at California Airports but Emergency Services Remain Online

A United airlines plane taxis at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles on Jan. 4, 2024. Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images

A global computer outage grounded flights in Southern California on Friday morning as reports of possible outages across the nation and the world affected companies including Microsoft and Google on Thursday night.

According to a report from City News Service, Los Angeles International Airport spokeswoman Dae Levin said there were delays on United, Delta, and American Airlines flights on Friday.

Departing flights were delayed after airlines in Los Angeles, Hollywood Burbank Airport, and Long Beach Airport requested that the Federal Aviation Administration—the U.S. agency overseeing aviation domestically and abroad—ground all flights following reports of outages in multiple countries, the report said.

“While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports. Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations,” United Airlines said in a statement.

American Airlines resumed operations at 2 a.m. on Friday morning, according to a statement.

While some reports indicated that emergency 911 call centers were offline in several states, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services confirmed in a statement on X that all public safety communications and critical infrastructure are functioning as expected.

“California is coordinating with local emergency officials and other critical infrastructure partners to address the impacts of this outage,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom on X.

The emergency office said the effect of the global outage was “minor” in California.

The Orange County Fire Authority said the outage temporarily affected some internal systems at the agency, according to City News Service. Its emergency response systems were unaffected.

Microsoft, Google Cloud, the London Stock Exchange, and Gatwick Airport in the UK were also affected by the global IT outage, according to the report.

“The underlying cause has been fixed, however, residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services,” Microsoft said in a social media statement on Friday morning.

The company said it was continuing to resolve the impact of the outage on its services and stated at around 8:30 p.m. PT that apps and services had been restored.

Microsoft tech partner and security platform CrowdStrike also said in a statement early Friday morning that the issue causing the outage had been identified. It also said it had deployed a fix for the problem.

“We assure our customers that CrowdStrike is operating normally and this issue does not affect our Falcon platform systems,” the statement said.

Other California agencies experiencing disruptions in normal daily operations were Amtrak, Los Angeles Superior Court, and the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, City News Service reported.