Disruptions continue after IT outage affects millions around the globe

Disruptions caused by Friday’s global tech outage continued into Saturday, as employees of airlines, banks, hospitals and other crucial businesses worked to catch up from the backlog caused by the historic technological meltdown that affected 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide.

Airlines were playing the biggest catchup game, after carriers were forced to cancel thousands of flights on Friday, leaving planes and crews stuck in the wrong locations. As of Saturday afternoon, nearly 1,500 flights across the U.S. had been canceled for the day, with another 4,600 delayed, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware.

Stranded travelers, meanwhile, expressed frustration.

“My whole trip is more or less ruined,” said Mariah Grant, an American who told NPR she was stuck in London after her flight to New York was significantly delayed because of the outage.

Grant also called the experience humbling.

“I think it all speaks to the fact that we are so reliant on technology,” she said, adding she was grateful for the customer service representatives at Gatwick Airport in London who helped reassure her and rebook her flight.

“This experience has really shown me how much human beings are still needed to be able to manage what happens when technology fails us,” Grant said.

Hospitals, too, were hit with a backlog after being forced to cancel appointments, including elective surgeries.

Massachusetts General Brigham, a Boston-based hospital, said it was back to being operational on Saturday after canceling all non-urgent surgeries and other appointments on Friday because of the outage.

“Our response teams are continuing to work diligently throughout the weekend to address the many additional downstream impacts across our system from the CrowdStrike failure,” Noah Brown, the hospital’s director of global communications, told NPR in a written statement.

Microsoft users across the globe found themselves knocked offline following a flawed software update from a cybersecurity group called CrowdStrike.

In a statement, the Austin-based CrowdStrike said it was “actively working with customers” whose screens were impacted by the incident, confirming it was not a cyberattack.

On Saturday, Microsoft said that CrowdStrike’s update had affected 8.5 million devices, less than 1% of all Windows machines.

“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,” David Weston, Microsoft's vice president for enterprise and OS security, wrote in a blog post.