By Shahnoor Saqib ( International Desk )
CrowdStrike outage: Canadian flights, health care disrupted after faulty update
Dozens of Canadian flights and several hospitals across the country were disrupted on Friday amid a global technology outage that has grounded planes and impacted banks as well as other businesses 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.
“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” it added.
“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.”
CrowdStrike said Mac and Linux hosts have not been affected.
The company offers cybersecurity services to thousands of clients across the globe.
Travel disruptions
As of 12:30 p.m. ET, roughly 100 flights that were scheduled to depart Canada were cancelled, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company. This does not include inbound flights to Canada.
More than half of the flights (56) scrapped Friday were from Toronto-based Porter Airlines, which said it had cancelled all flights until 3 p.m. ET.
“Passengers cannot be rebooked while systems are offline,” Porter Airlines said in a statement.
Meanwhile, there were at least five Air Canada flights, 11 WestJet flights and two from Flair Airlines cancelled by Friday noon, according to Cirium.
Toronto Pearson International Airport said 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.