The outage, which impacted computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, has caused more than 2,000 flight cancellations nationwide as of 1:30 p.m. Friday.
Among flights into and out of Orlando International Airport, 246 have been delayed and 78 have been canceled, according to data from FlightAware. Travelers can be seen standing in long, winding lines in one video shared on X by WESH-2 reporter Tony Atkins.
Among the airport’s largest airlines — Southwest, Spirit and Delta, according to market share data from Orlando Business Journal — Delta has canceled the most flights at 26, followed by Spirit at 21. Southwest hasn’t canceled flights but delayed 64.
Delta was on a ground stop Friday morning but has reestablished operations, WESH 2 reported.
Central Florida airports Orlando Sanford International Airport and Melbourne Orlando International Airport are also experiencing delays. Sanford has reported no canceled flights but 13 total delays as of noon Friday. Melbourne has reported two delays and two cancellations.
For specific flight information, travelers should contact their airlines directly, said MCO in a statement on X posted just before 6 a.m. Friday. MCO then encouraged travelers to allow extra time for check-in and baggage processing in a follow-up statement posted six hours later.
Orlando Sanford International issued a similar statement warning about delays at 8:36 a.m., and Melbourne followed suit at 9:01 a.m.
The outage originated from Austin-based cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. The organization sent out an update to businesses using its software that wound up crashing machines running Microsoft.
CEO George Kurtz said the incident was not a cyberattack in an X post early this morning. The issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed, he wrote.
Other Orlando institutions affected include Florida’s Turnpike, Lynx bus service and NeighborLink booking system, and the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.A MESS: Frontier airlines is one of several at @MCO dealing with long lines and frustrated customers. I’m live on WESH (amid our own technical issues) with updates from the airlines. pic.twitter.com/PWjlgo9kXD
— Tony Atkins (@TonyAtkinsTV) July 19, 2024
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