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Staff travel information

United Airlines allows one free checked baggage per ticketed customer. per bag. Size and weight limitations apply. All applicable excess, overweight, oversized checked baggage fees apply, consistent with revenue customer charges.

Maximum weight is 50 pounds and maximum size is 62 inches (length + width + height) per checked piece of luggage.

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The following attire is unacceptable in any cabin but not limited to:

Attire that reveals midriff; attire that reveals any type of undergarments; attire that is designed as sleepwear, underwear or swim attire. Mini Skirts; shorts that are shorter than three inches above the knee when in a standing position. Form-fitting lycra/spances tops, pants and dresses. Attire that has derogatory terminology of graphics.

Attire that is excessively dirty or has holes/tears. Any attire that is provocative, inappropriately revealing or see-through. Bare feet; beach-type, rubber flip-flops. All pass riders are responsible to ensure that all of their pass riders are dressed appropriately for pass travel on United/United Express Airlines.

Flight listings must be made at least 48 hours in advance of travel for international flights and 12 hours in advance for all other flights.

United only upgrades non-revenue passengers who make their listing in business or first class. Otherwise, passengers are placed in economy even if there are available first/business class seats.

When requesting a refund, once one e-ticket has been refunded all e-tickets associated with the same record locator will be refunded as well.

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Infant/lap child e-ticketing on United Airlines cannot be processed at this time via myIDTravel. You will need to see an Agent at the United Ticket Counter, on the day of travel, so that they may assist you with ticketing for an infant/lap child.

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Pass Travel Problems

Date: March 14, 2012

Many pass travel issues have come up with the implementation of SHARES(tm).  Pass travel is governed by company policy, however AFA has been monitoring the various issues that have come up and is advocating for swift resolution from the company. 

Problems associated with Interline tickets, pass travel not being "e-ticketed", incorrect taxes deducted for pass travel, are just a few of the issues that we are hearing about. 

 Many of us commute, so these problems are not just about leisure travel, but about getting to work and being a reliable employee. Pass travel issues should be written up to the company (pass travel department and base manager) at [email protected]  and make sure to copy in AFA. The March 5 United Daily lists the following phone numbers you may use to contact the Employee Travel Center: 713-324-PASS (7277)  or 866- FLY-EPAS (359-3727) for questions or problems related to pass travel.

For more information please see the “Travel” tab on the company website , Flying Together. For questions, please email the Employee Travel Center at [email protected] .

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What we know about the computer update glitch disrupting systems around the world

Bobby Allyn

Bill Chappell

Fatima Al-Kassab

Microsoft, which hosts cloud services with businesses and governments, said it was grappling with service outages after a glitch triggered by software distributed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. Haven Daley/AP hide caption

A technological meltdown left employees of airlines, banks, hospitals and emergency services around the world staring at the dreaded “blue screen of death” on Friday as their computers went inert in what is being described as a historic outage.

“This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it's actually happened this time,” internet security analyst Troy Hunt said via X .

Security experts race to fix critical software flaw threatening industries worldwide

From continent to continent, Microsoft users reported being suddenly knocked offline, and the culprit was determined to be cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, which says one of its routine software updates malfunctioned.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” the company said in a statement.

Customers using Mac and Linux operating systems were not affected, CrowdStrike said.

When the faulty update crashed computer systems, scores of airport travelers were stranded, hospital appointments were delayed and live news broadcasts were cut short.

How big is the outage?

It is massive, far-reaching and sudden.

Some computer problems cascade, creating ripples of failures. But in this case, the flaw permeated Microsoft systems worldwide nearly immediately. The company says its Windows 365 Cloud PCs, apps and services were affected.

Microsoft remains the dominant desktop operating system worldwide, with more than 72% market share, according to the Statcounter website . The CrowdStrike problem does not directly affect all of those machines: its security software is mainly used by businesses and large organizations. The company says its customers include 43 U.S. states and nearly 300 companies in the Fortune 500.

Hundreds of thousands of Microsoft outages were reported on Friday, according to Downdetector , the website that tracks outages based on users’ reports.

In 16 hours, 311,000 global outage reports came in, Michelle Badrian, senior communications manager at Ookla, which owns Downdetector, told NPR. Of that figure, she added, 58,000 reports were from the U.S., 26,000 from the U.K., and 20,000 from India. Large numbers of reports also came in from Germany, Canada and Australia.

There are signs that relief is on the way: Badrian said that as of midday Friday ET, “we are observing report volumes declining both for Microsoft services and for all services overall.”

While server-related outages are common, the scale of the CrowdStrike disruption was astonishing to many tech observers.

“This IT outage is a stark reminder of how dependent we are on technology and many other things that happen behind the scenes that most of us are unaware of,” said Louisville-based tech executive Adam Robinson on X . “Modern society and the many comforts we enjoy is a fragile thing.”

Passengers wait in front of check-in counters at the capital's Berlin Brandenburg Airport, in Schönefeld, Germany, on Friday after a widespread technology outage disrupted flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world. Christoph Soeder/AP/DPA hide caption

What about air travel?

More than 2,000 flights originating or landing in the U.S. were canceled as of noon ET Friday, and more than twice that number were delayed, according to the FlightAware tracking site.

Delta Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines announced they were resuming some or all of their scheduled flights after initially being grounded when the problem struck their systems. The airlines also said they were issuing waivers to affected customers.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport — a major hub for long-distance flights — said a "global system failure" impacted incoming and outgoing flights on one of the busiest days of the year.

Landings at Zurich airport were suspended and flights in Hungary disrupted.

Spanish airport operator Aena reported a computer systems “incident” at all Spanish airports that it said could cause delays.

What other kinds of services went offline?

In some states, including Alaska and Ohio , 911 phone lines were down.

The U.K.’s National Health Service has been widely affected. The NHS said Friday that doctors’ appointments and patient records had been affected but that there was no known impact on emergency services. The BBC reported that two-thirds of doctors’ practices in Northern Ireland had been affected, with doctors unable to access patient records, generate prescriptions or see the result of laboratory tests.

In Germany, some hospitals canceled non-emergency operations.

Broadcasters around the world were also affected. In France and Australia , live television broadcasts were knocked offline.

Sky News, a major U.K. news channel, was off air for a time on Friday morning. It later returned, but without “ full capabilities , ” its chairman, David Rhodes, said on X Friday afternoon. A post on Australia’s ABC News website said the broadcaster was experiencing a “major network outage.”

The London Stock Exchange’s news service stopped working. Shipping in the Baltic was also impacted, with the container hub of Gdansk in Poland hit by major disruptions.

How do people fix their computers?

CrowdStrike says the problem was not a cyberattack, but rather a software glitch. The company said that after identifying the issue, it withdrew the "problematic channel file" that was affecting customers' systems.

Because of that move, if a Windows system with CrowdStrike's Falcon sensor was brought online after 1:27 a.m. ET Friday , the company said, it wouldn't be affected.

It also published a workaround that involves booting a Windows machine in a recovery environment, deleting a single file in the CrowdStrike directory, and restarting.

An airport information screen displays an error message rather than travel information at San Francisco International Airport on Friday after a computer problem unraveled systems in the U.S. and dozens of other countries. Talia Smith/NPR hide caption

What is CrowdStrike?

It’s a U.S. cybersecurity firm based in Austin, Texas. The company went public in 2019 and is currently in the S&P 500 index. As of early July, CrowdStrike’s stock had been riding months of gains. But share prices fell sharply in early trading Friday.

“This is clearly a major black eye for CrowdStrike,” said WedBush analyst Dan Ives.

CrowdStrike made headlines in 2016, when the company was hired by the Democratic National Committee to investigate a breach of its data systems . CrowdStrike determined that the hack was a case of foreign interference — the work of Russian-backed hacking groups.

The company’s marquee product is its “Falcon” cybersecurity software — and it traced the current problem to a change in a sensor in that system. That also helps explain how and why the resulting failures might have spread so quickly: Rather than being stored locally, the Falcon security platform “is 100% cloud-based.”

The company apologized for the outages on Friday, stating, "We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption."

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Global tech outage hits airlines, banks, health care and public transit

In the u.s., hundreds of flights were canceled friday morning and some public transit systems reported impacts..

A defective update from U.S. cybersecurity software company CrowdStrike crashed Microsoft Windows systems around the globe Friday . The tech outage disrupted operations across industries such as banks, hospitals and 911 call centers, plus grounded flights and hampered public transit systems and. Although a fix was deployed to restore most systems by the afternoon to return to normal, ripple effects may be felt throughout the weekend, experts warn. 

CrowdStrike , which advertises being used by over half of Fortune 500 companies, said one of its recent content updates had a defect that impacted Microsoft's Windows Operating System, adding the incident was "not a security incident or cyberattack."

"Earlier today, a CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of IT systems globally," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement on Friday afternoon. "We are actively supporting customers to assist in their recovery."

The company's CEO, George Kurtz, apologized for the disruptions in a post on X, noting the issue has been identified and isolated and a fix has been deployed. CrowdStrike is "working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on." Meanwhile, Microsoft said, "the underlying cause has been fixed" and impacted Microsoft 365 apps and services have been recovered, though the company continues to monitor the issue.

Kurtz went on to warn in his statement, "We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this. I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives."

In the U.S., thousands of flights were canceled Friday morning . American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines were among those who grounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft said it resolved a cloud-services-related outage that impacted several low-cost carriers.

“Every line is long,” said Chance Ortego, 31, whose flight to New York was canceled Friday morning.

Public transit systems in the U.S. also reported temporary impacts, but for the most part, trains and buses were running as scheduled. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in Washington, D.C., said its "website and some of our internal systems are currently down," but trip-planning applications were later restored. In New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority also said some of its MTA customer information systems were temporarily offline until around 5:30 p.m.

Around the world, the outages disrupted London's Stock Exchange, caused major train delays in the U.K., sent British broadcaster Sky News off air, forced medical facilities in Europe and the U.S. to cancel some services and caused disruptions at airports in Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong and India.

Widespread economic impact from the outage is expected to be small, even though many companies were still trying to resume full operations by the time the stock market closed.

Travel disruptions: Over 2,000 US flights canceled amid global IT outage

Developments:

◾ More than 5,000 flights were canceled globally as of 3:30 p.m. Eastern, about 4.6% of all scheduled commercial flights for the day, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.

◾ Some U.S. border crossings saw impacts amid the outage: Traffic stalled on the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Detroit with Windsor, Ontario, Canada, as well as at the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, the Detroit Free Press reported . CBP One, the Customs and Border Patrol app, and the agency’s border wait times website, each appeared to experience outages.

◾ U.S. stocks closed lower on Friday, in the wake of the outage. CrowdStrike shares closed down 11.1% at $304.96, with analysts predicting the outage would cost the company money to fix and restore trust with its customers. It was the lowest close for the shares since May 2. Microsoft shares fared better, closing down only 0.74% at $437.11.

◾ Krispy Kreme gave away free doughnuts  Friday due to the global tech outage.

◾ Some Starbucks locations were reportedly taking only cash Friday, and customers reported being unable to use the coffee chain's mobile app.

◾ Some had a sense of humor through it , with workers who had to muddle through expressing their wishes for a digital snow day from the office − "Knock Teams out" − as the outage didn't equate to a work stoppage for all.

◾ Dubai International Airport said on X it was operating normally following "a global system outage that affected the check-in process for some airlines." It added the affected airlines "promptly switched to an alternate system, allowing normal check-in operations to resume swiftly."

CrowdStrike impact: How a global IT outage unraveled the world's tech

How the CrowdStrike outage played out throughout the day:

Portland issues emergency declaration

Portland, Oregon, Mayor Ted Wheeler issued an emergency declaration Friday over the tech outage, with a statement noting the outages are affecting city servers, employee computers and emergency communications.

Meanwhile, the Maryland Department of Emergency Management increased its state activation level from "normal" to "partial," citing the tech outage. A post on X says a "partial" activation is for incidents that require "significant monitoring or resources," with additional emergency operations staffing from other agencies, functions and supporting organizations.

- Bailey Schulz

What is CrowdStrike?

CrowdStrike is a popular cybersecurity software company created in 2012 by CEO George Kurtz, along with Dmitri Alperovitch, and Gregg Marston.

According to its website, CrowdStrike has the "world's most advanced cloud-native platform that protects and enables the people, processes and technologies that drive modern enterprise."

Alperovitch, CrowdStrike's former Chief Technology Officer, is a member of the Biden administration's Homeland Security Advisory Council , which is meant to provide advice and expertise to support decision-making "across the spectrum of homeland security operations."

- Gabe Hauari , Bailey Schulz

What caused the CrowdStrike outage?

According to an alert sent by CrowdStrike to its clients and reviewed by Reuters, the company's "Falcon Sensor" software caused Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the "Blue Screen of Death." 

Kurtz said "there was an issue with a Falcon content update for Windows Hosts" but customers “remain fully protected,” according to a post on X . He also reiterated that Friday's outage "was not a security or cyber incident."

Anne Neuberger, deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, said she spoke to Kurtz Friday and confirmed the incident did not appear to be related to a cyber attack.

“At this point, we believe that it is an IT-related patch, an issue with that patch,” she said while speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. "I think they're determining what went wrong there."

‘I’m just hoping to make it onto a flight’

Chance Ortego had reached the finish line of a nearly two-week work trip when he saw the news all air travelers dread: his flight was delayed. 

Ortego was in the AirTrain en route to his flight from San Francisco International Airport when he heard other travelers discussing the outage. After checking the status of his 7:05 a.m. Delta Air Lines flight to New York – which was pushed back nearly three hours – he rebooked another flight at 9:15 a.m. 

He later learned his original flight had been canceled. Ortego was among the thousands of passengers around the world facing delays, cancellations and problems checking in as airports and airlines were caught up in a massive IT outage that grounded U.S. flights early Friday. 

“I was already planning to sleep,” said Ortego, who works in health care. “Now I'm just hoping to make it onto a flight.” 

Inside the airport, there was more chaos than a typical travel day as airlines recovered from the outage. Many screens were blank except for an error message and airport personnel made announcements directing questions about flights to airlines.

All U.S. airlines issued travel waivers for those affected to easily rebook their plans. Those who opted to cancel can rest easy knowing the Department of Transportation classified the cancellations and delays as controllable, thus airlines are responsible for upholding the commitments they've made to customers when it comes to policies like rebooking or hotel and meal vouchers as the mess gets sorted out. 

- Nathan Diller

Impact on the economy

The outage isn’t expected to have any effect on the broader economy unless it persists for days.

“At this point, the IT outage is more a nuisance than an economic event,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “If it drags on into early next week, the economic damage will begin to mount.”

If the outage is limited to a day or two, canceled flights can be rebooked and banking transactions can be completed later.

“There is plenty of time for activity to be recovered over the remainder of the month,” says Jonathan Miller, senior U.S. economist at Barclays.

- Paul Davidson

Outage impacts US public transit websites, ticketing

Major cities were generally able to keep trains and busses running, but tech issues have been causing problems with ticketing and other tech systems, leading to delays in some cases.

The Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area Transit Authority reported website and other tech issues, but said trains and buses were running as scheduled.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City reported problems with "customer information systems" but said it's buses and trains were unaffected. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it was not affected but urged riders who might be using public transit to any area airports to check with their airlines before traveling for updates.

New Jersey Transit said some of its ticketing machines may have been impacted but its buses and trains were, for the most part, running on time. Some trains were out of operation Friday due to repairs that had to be made because of the intense heat that blanketed the region all week.

The Chicago Tribune reported Friday morning that commuter rail lines were affected, though it noted traffic is typically lighter on Fridays than other days. Delays on some lines were as long as 45 minutes, the Tribune reported. Chicago Transit bus and rail service was not affected but some CTA customers were unable to add value to their payment cards via the app or machines overnight, but the issue has been resolved.

Some transit systems, including Metro Transit in Minneapolis and Cincinnati Metro reported temporary disruptions to websites, trip planners, social media and other applications but no impact to its bus or trains.

- Phaedra Trethan

Despite summer break, schools disrupted by IT issues

The CrowdStrike outage crashed some computers at colleges Friday and hampered a popular software for enrolling students in K-12 schools for the fall.

The University of Rochester, a private school in New York, told students to keep rebooting their systems until the problem was fixed. The University of Alabama’s technology office said its campus computers using Microsoft Windows crashed. Rutgers University and the University of Kentucky also reported disruptions. 

Despite the summer break, K-12 schools in Maryland and Kansas said they were having problems with PowerSchool, a widely used software for grading and student enrollment. An update posted to the company’s webpage Friday morning said the outage was impacting all its major products, including its enrollment feature. 

- Zachary Schermele

911 call centers disrupted

State and local law enforcement agencies across the country reported disruptions to 911 services after the outage hit.

National reports of 911 outages peaked at more than 100 on Friday just before 3 a.m. according to Downdetector .

Agencies in at least seven states reported temporary outages, including the St. Louis County Sheriff's Office and Faribault Police Department in Minnesota, 911 systems New Hampshire , Fulton County, Indiana , and Middletown, Ohio . 

Non-emergency and 911 calls to multiple dispatch centers in Alaska "were not able to be answered" for around seven hours overnight, Austin McDaniel, communications director for the Alaska Department of Public Safety, told USA TODAY in an email.

"Dispatch centers switched to analog phone systems or to partner dispatch centers that were not impacted to continue taking calls," he wrote. Systems in the state were back up as of 4:23 a.m. local time.

The Phoenix Police Department was also impacted ‒ 911 call centers could take calls, but had to dispatch officers manually, the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported .

The Federal Communications Commission said in an email to USA TODAY that it was aware of reports of disruptions to 911.

"We’re closely working with other federal agencies to provide assistance and determine the extent of these service disruptions.”

- Cybele Mayes-Osterman

Biden briefed on global outage as federal agencies assess impacts

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the CrowdStrike outage and his team is in touch with the cybersecurity firm, as well as with impacted companies and agencies, according to the White House. Biden will receive "sector-by-sector updates throughout the day and is standing by to provide assistance as needed," the White House added.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement it is working to "fully assess and address system outages."

DHS added it's working alongside the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as well as CrowdStrike, Microsoft and federal, state, local and critical infrastructure partners to get a grasp on the incident and its impacts.

Over 2K US flights canceled amid outage

Several U.S. carriers, including American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines, issued ground stops for all their flights early on Friday due to communication problems, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The FAA said operations were no longer impacted as of 10:53 a.m. ET, but it continues to monitor the situation and warned the global IT issue could continue to affect flights this weekend.

There were more than 2,500 U.S. flights canceled and more than 7,900 delays as of 3:25 p.m. EDT, according to flight-tracking website  FlightAware .

Most airlines were able to resume operations as the morning progressed, but many said they expected disruptions to continue throughout the day.

Read more about the outage's travel impacts

Hospitals cancel nonemergency services

Hospitals across the U.S. and overseas were impacted by the outage, which forced some to cancel elective surgeries and halt visitations as well as outpatient services.

Mass General Brigham in Boston canceled previously scheduled nonurgent surgeries, procedures and medical visits, according to a statement sent to USA TODAY. In the same area, Tufts Medical Center told media outlet WHDH it’s still assessing the outage’s effect on clinical and surgical operations.

In Texas, Ben Taub Hospital and Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital suspended "hospital visitation and patient information," citing a "Microsoft Windows failure," according to a statement from Harris Health System . Cincinnati Children's Hospital said many of its Microsoft-based computer systems are down because of the outage, which forced the hospital to cancel early morning appointments.

"We are in touch with the hospital field and the federal government and monitoring the situation closely to better understand its scope and impact," said John Riggi, the American Hospital Association's national adviser for cybersecurity and risk. 

Two hospitals in northern German cities canceled elective operations scheduled for Friday but continued to provide patient care and emergency services.

Outages exposes fragility of internet infrastructure

While there were reports of companies gradually restoring their services, analysts weighed the potential of what one called the biggest-ever outage in the industry and the broader economy.

"This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core Internet infrastructure," Ciaran Martin, Professor at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government and former head of the U.K. National Cyber Security Centre, told Reuters.

"IT security tools are all designed to ensure that companies can continue to operate in the worst-case scenario of a data breach, so to be the root cause of a global IT outage is an unmitigated disaster," said Ajay Unni, CEO of StickmanCyber, one of Australia's largest cybersecurity services companies.

Outages ripple far and wide

From the United Kingdom to Singapore, the effects of tech outages were far-reaching on Friday.

British broadcaster Sky News went off-air and train companies in the U.K. reported long delays. Departure boards at several U.K. airports appeared to freeze, according to passengers who posted reports on social media.

London's Stock Exchange reported experiencing disruptions. Some hospitals also reported difficulties processing appointments and several chain retail stores said they couldn't take payments. The soccer club Manchester United said on X that it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.

In Australia, media, banks and telecoms companies suffered outages.

There was no information to suggest the outage was a cybersecurity incident, the office of Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority said some of its systems were offline due to a worldwide technical outage, but have since been restored. It said MTA train and bus services were unaffected.

Spanish authorities reported a "computer incident" at all its airports.

Berlin's main airport said check-ins were delayed because of a "technical fault."

Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions which it said would affect "all airlines operating across the Network." It did not specify the nature of the disruptions.

There were reports a shipping terminal in Gdansk on Poland's Baltic coast was not operating normally.

NetBlocks, a digital-connectivity watchdog, said that the outage reported by global airlines, corporates and infrastructure services firms and others was having "minimal" impact on global Internet connectivity.

Contributing: Reuters

Mass IT outage: here's a list of companies and operations affected

• A huge global IT outage is disrupting flights, banks, retailers, and media outlets.
• The widespread disruptions have been linked to an issue with the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
• Operations affected include airlines in the US and Europe, supermarkets, and some 911 lines.

A mass IT outage has hit flights, banks, retailers, and media outlets around the world.

The issues appear to be linked to the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike .

Microsoft also acknowledged the issue in an X update early Friday, writing, "Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions."

Here are some of the companies and operations affected.

Numerous airlines grounded flights early Friday morning, including the big three US carriers: United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and American Airlines. In statements, they all cited technology issues.

Delta and American had both canceled their ground stops by 7 a.m. ET.

A United spokesperson told Business Insider that it was holding all aircraft at their departure airports while it works to restore systems. "Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations," they added.

American has blamed the issues on CrowdStrike, saying they were because of a "technical issue with Crowdstrike that is impacting multiple carriers," according to BBC News.

The budget airlines Frontier, Allegiant, and Spirit also issued ground stops which were later canceled.

Frontier's was issued on Thursday night. "Flight operations are currently being impacted by a major Microsoft technical outage," it said in a statement.

Spirit said it was unable to rebook affected customers because of the outage.

Disruption also extended to Europe. The continent's largest airline, Ryanair, advised passengers to arrive early as the outage caused "disruption across the network."

KLM also said it had to "largely suspend operations" as the outage made "flight handling impossible."

British Airways, Wizz Air, Turkish Airlines, Eurowings, Lufthansa, and Qantas were also among those who said they were affected.

According to a Facebook post from Alaska State Troopers , emergency lines in the state are also affected.

The post said: "Due to a nationwide technology-related outage, many 911 and non-emergency call centers are not working correctly across the State of Alaska."

"We appreciate your patience and will update you when we know more," the statement added.

The major UK airports Heathrow, Gatwick, and Luton have reported issues, with some warning of delays and disruption.

Related stories

An X post from Gatwick Express , a train service for the airport, said the company was unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, "leading to potential short-notice cancelations, particularly on the Thameslink and Great Northern networks."

A spokesperson for Belfast International Airport confirmed to BI that whiteboards were being used to handwrite flight information before systems were later restored. Whiteboards were also used at Singapore Changi Airport.

Hospitals and doctors' surgeries

Several hospitals and doctors' practices appear to have been affected by the outage.

In the UK, the NHS' EMIS system, which doctors use to book appointments, view patient notes, order prescriptions, and make referrals, appears to be having issues .

A spokesperson for the NHS told BI in a statement: "The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with EMIS, an appointment and patient record system, which is causing disruption in the majority of GP practices."

They said that long-standing measures were in place to manage disruption and that there was no known impact on 999 or emergency services, so people should use these services as normal.

"Patients should attend appointments unless told otherwise and only contact their GP if it's urgent, and otherwise please use 111 online or call 111," they added.

Two German hospitals canceled elective operations scheduled for Friday, Reuters reported.

NYCT Subway

Commuters in New York City and DC may also face delays Friday morning.

In an X post, the NYCT subway said: "Train arrival information is unavailable for A/B/C/D/E/F/G/J/M/N/Q/R/Z/Rockaway Park Shuttle/Franklin Av Shuttle due to a worldwide technical outage. Train service is unaffected."

The post said the tech outage also impacted Subway officials' ability to see train locations.

Broadcasters

Sky News also appears to have been hit by the outage. The UK news channel has been showing archive footage and briefly displaying an error message.

The news site appears to be up and running at the time of writing.

London Stock Exchange

The London Stock Exchange's website was also experiencing issues.

"RNS news service is currently experiencing a third-party global technical issue, preventing news from being published on www.londonstockexchange.com ," the company said in a statement.

"Technical teams are working to restore the service. Other services across the group, including London Stock Exchange, continue to operate as normal," it continued.

Retailers and fast-food giants

Bloomberg reported that McDonald's Japan suspended about a third of its stores in the country on Friday. The issue was with the stores' cash registers, the report said.

The grocery-store chain Woolworths told BI that some stores had "been impacted as a result of the global IT issue." All but six stores were open for business, but some had fewer functioning checkouts.

Delivery delays

FedEx and UPS are warning of delivery delays because of the outage.

In a statement on the company's website , FedEx said it was experiencing "substantial disruptions throughout our networks due to a global IT outage experienced by a third-party software vendor." The company said parcels due to be delivered on Friday might face delays.

A UPS spokesperson told BI that it continues to operate effectively but there may be some service delays due to third-party outage "impacting some UPS computer systems in the U.S. and Europe."

Some US state driver services are down

Drivers in some states are unable to access services because of the outage.

Georgia's Department of Driver Services posted on X that "due to the global Microsoft/Crowdstrike outage, DDS services are unavailable at this time."

Tennessee's Department of Safety and Homeland Security said some Driver Services Centers may not be able to process transactions, according to a post on X.

North Carolina's Department of Motor Vehicles driver license and plate agencies are also impacted and unable to assist customers, according to a CNN report.

Bloomberg reported that at the Ocean Park Marriott in Hong Kong, staff were using pen and paper to check guests in and said the outage was affecting their systems globally.

Marriott International later told CNN in a statement that "certain hotel systems" have been affected.

"We are actively working with our vendors to resolve issues that have impacted certain hotel systems," the company said in a statement to the publication. "We apologize for any inconvenience that guests may experience."

Watch: Global computer glitch grounds flights, knocks out 911

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What We Know About the Global Microsoft Outage

Airlines to banks to retailers were affected in many countries. Businesses are struggling to recover.

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By Eshe Nelson and Danielle Kaye

Eshe Nelson reported from London and Danielle Kaye from New York.

Across the world, critical businesses and services including airlines, hospitals, train networks and TV stations, were disrupted on Friday by a global tech outage affecting Microsoft users.

In many countries, flights were grounded, workers could not get access to their systems and, in some cases, customers could not make card payments in stores. While some of the problems were resolved within hours, many businesses, websites and airlines continued to struggle to recover.

What happened?

A series of outages rippled across the globe as information displays, login systems and broadcasting networks went dark.

The problem affecting the majority of services was caused by a flawed update by CrowdStrike , an American cybersecurity firm, whose systems are intended to protect users from hackers. Microsoft said on Friday that it was aware of an issue affecting machines running “CrowdStrike Falcon.”

But Microsoft had also said there was an earlier outage affecting U.S. users of Azure, its cloud service system. Some users may have been affected by both. Even as CrowdStrike sent out a fix, some systems were still affected by midday in the United States as businesses needed to make manual updates to their systems to resolve the issue.

George Kurtz, the president and chief executive of CrowdStrike, said on Friday morning that it could take some time for some systems to recover.

How a Software Update Crashed Computers Around the World

Here’s a visual explanation for how a faulty software update crippled machines.

What was affected?

It is more apt to ask what was not affected. Everything from airlines to banks to health care systems in many countries was hit.

In Australia, passengers were stuck in long lines at Sydney airport as information screens went blank, and programming was disrupted at the national broadcaster. Airports in Britain, Germany and Taiwan had long delays at check-ins and flights were delayed or canceled. At an airport in South Korea, handwritten boarding passes were being slowly handed out.

How the airline cancellations rippled around the world (and across time zones)

Share of canceled flights at 25 airports on Friday

50% of flights

Ai r po r t

Bengalu r u K empeg o wda

Dhaka Shahjalal

Minneapolis-Saint P aul

Stuttga r t

Melbou r ne

Be r lin B r anden b urg

London City

Amsterdam Schiphol

Chicago O'Hare

Raleigh−Durham

B r adl e y

Cha r lotte

Reagan National

Philadelphia

1:20 a.m. ET

Flights continued to be disrupted at some U.S. airports into the morning because of the cascading effect of flight delays and cancellations. The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that ground stops and delays would be “intermittent” at some airports as airlines grapple with residual technology issues.

The outage affected emergency 911 lines in multiple states, the U.S. Emergency Alert System said on social media — but most if not all of the emergency system problems appeared to be resolving themselves by midmorning.

A few hospitals in Germany said they would cancel elective procedures; and in Britain, some doctors in the National Health Service were unable to gain access to systems. Kaiser Permanente, a medical system that provides care to 12.6 million members in the United States, said all of its hospitals’ systems were affected, and it activated backup systems to keep caring for patients.

At some banks, including JPMorgan Chase, there were delays in processing trades because bankers could not log into their work systems. TD Bank, the 10th largest in the United States, said customers complained that they could not access their online accounts.

But the problems were not uniform. London’s Heathrow Airport said that its flights were still operating. The London Stock Exchange said that it could not publish news updates but the exchange, where trades take place, was working as normal. The auction system at the Norwegian central bank was briefly interrupted, but other major central banks, the European Central Bank and Bank of England, said there was no effect on their systems.

In some cases, issues were resolved relatively quickly. In Ukraine, Sense Bank and the mobile operator Vodafone reported brief problems with their services. At Dubai International Airport, two airlines switched to alternative systems, allowing operations to resume.

Major grocery chains in the United States appeared largely unaffected, with most stores operating as usual. But the world’s biggest logistics companies, including United Parcel Service and FedEx, did report disruptions, causing delivery delays in some regions. A spokesman for UPS said the company’s computer systems in the United States and Europe were affected.

Who’s to blame?

Mr. Kurtz said CrowdStrike took responsibility for the software bug, sent in a system update, that caused the outage. He said in a post on X that Mac and Linux users were not affected.

The incident was not a cyberattack, Mr. Kurtz said, adding that customers remain “fully protected.” But Mr. Kurtz warned on NBC’s “Today” show that the fix could take some time to put in place.

“We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption,” Mr. Kurtz said. Microsoft offered suggestions to users to help resolve the issue, including restoring backup systems.

While CrowdStrike is at fault for the software bug, J.J. Guy, chief executive of cybersecurity company Sevco, said poor resiliency of Microsoft’s operating system is to blame for extent of the damage.

“Bugs happen all the time and are unavoidable, the result of business complexity and technology,” Mr. Guy said. “But this became a catastrophic incident because of the remediation procedures. The resiliency of the operating system was not sufficient to mitigate the risk of that.”

Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment on its operating system. The company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, said in a post on X that Microsoft is working with CrowdStrike to offer customers technical guidance and bring systems back online.

Eshe Nelson is a reporter based in London, covering economics and business news for The New York Times. More about Eshe Nelson

Danielle Kaye is a business reporter and a 2024 David Carr Fellow, a program for journalists early in their careers. More about Danielle Kaye