Southern California airports, ports, government agencies, and private businesses were recovering on July 20 from a massive global technology outage caused by a botched software update by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike that sparked what experts said was the “largest IT outage in history.”
IT experts warned that it could take weeks for the worldwide global tech infrastructure to fully recover after Friday’s failed software update disrupted computer systems all over the world.
“In some cases, the fix may be applied very quickly,” Adam Leon Smith of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT in England told reporters. “But if computers have reacted in a way that means they’re getting into blue screens ... that could take days and weeks.”
In Southern California, systems across the region were affected, leading to delayed and canceled flights at local airports, disruptions at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, and headaches for other computer-dependent operations.
As of early Saturday, the flight-tracking website FlightAware was reporting 93 flight cancellations at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and 304 delays—a significant decrease from Friday, when the site reported at least 190 cancellations at LAX and 614 delays.
John Wayne Airport in Orange County was experiencing 22 cancellations and 26 delays Saturday, while Hollywood Burbank Airport had nine cancellations and another 14 delays, and Long Beach Airport had 19 delays and no cancellations.
On Friday, departing flights from LAX, Hollywood Burbank Airport, and Long Beach Airport were temporarily grounded after the airlines asked the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for a ground stop on all flights, according to an alert from the FAA.
Flights at John Wayne Airport did not have a ground stop, but there were sporadic cancellations and delays.
On Friday, FlightAware reported more than 45,000 delayed flights overall, 12,427 within, into, or out of the United States. In addition, there were more than 3,000 flight cancellations involving the United States.
By early Saturday afternoon, 1,675 cancellations into or out of the United States were reported, along with 5,757 delays.
FAA officials said they were “working with airlines to closely monitor the global IT issue that could continue to affect flights this weekend.”
LAX spokeswoman Dae Levine told City News Service on Friday morning, “We are seeing some delays from United, Delta and American Airlines. Our communications center is in constant communications with the FAA.”
American Airlines issued a statement saying, “We’re aware of a technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple carriers. American is working with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
American Airlines issued a statement at 2 a.m. Friday that they were back up and running as normal.
“I am hearing reports of some airlines only offering flight credits to passengers for cancelled flights. Let me be clear—you are entitled to get your money back promptly if your flight is cancelled and you don’t take a rebooking,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg posted Saturday on X.
CrowdStrike is a U.S. cybersecurity company based in Austin, Texas, that has admitted to being responsible for the error and is working to correct it.
The technology outage affected systems worldwide, with issues reported at Berlin Airport in Germany, the London Stock Exchange, Google Cloud, Microsoft, and Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said in a statement the outage was “not a security or cyber incident.”
“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” he said. “We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on. As noted earlier, the issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed.”
Meanwhile, CrowdStrike officials said the flawed update had been rolled back and Microsoft said it is investigating the extent of the outage.
Court Hearings Delayed
Los Angeles Superior Court officials reported that they were “experiencing significant system-wide connectivity issues” that were impacting the court’s operations. Hearings scheduled for Friday that involved remote appearances were all postponed, and parties were being notified of new dates.Later Friday, the court said it had been targeted by hackers in an event officials said was unrelated to the worldwide tech outage.
“The Court has identified a serious security event in the Court’s internal systems which has now been determined to be a ransomware attack,” officials said. “The attack began in the early morning hours of Friday, July 19. The attack is believed to be unrelated to the CrowdStrike issue currently creating disruptions to technology worldwide. The Court is working diligently with authorities to investigate the breach and to mitigate its impact and will share more information as it becomes available.”
Shipments at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach were also disrupted Friday, with hundreds of trucks waiting for hours for cargo to be released and loaded.
Later in the day, however, operations were back to normal.
“Port of Los Angeles fully operational; all container terminal gates clear after CrowdStrike/Microsoft global outage,” the Port of Los Angeles said.
“Port of Long Beach marine terminals are open and operating as this global technology outage unfolds, with cargo operations commencing normally this morning,” the Long Beach port posted Friday on X. “Overnight, four terminals experienced computer issues but were able to resolve the problems with minimal disruptions.”
The Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Fire Department both said they had not experienced any disruptions.
The Orange County Fire Authority reported that the outage “temporarily” affected some of the agency’s internal systems, but emergency response was unaffected.
Amtrak reported the outage was preventing credit card transactions for its Pacific Surfliner service on Friday. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal payments can be used to complete online reservations.
Metrolink advised customers Friday morning that the outage was impacting its smartphone app, warning that “passengers may experience issues when using the app or when purchasing tickets.” The issue was resolved by late morning.
Even coffee giant Starbucks was affected, with its online ordering system going down Friday morning.
