by Vacationers are still reeling as airlines recover from being hit by one of the biggest global IT crashes in recent memory.
Passengers’ travel plans were ruined on Friday when thousands of flights were canceled internationally after a botched software upgrade hit the Microsoft Windows operating system. The incident caused panic across a number of services, with hospital appointments being cancelled, payroll systems being seized and television channels going off air.
Almost 7,000 flights were canceled worldwide on Friday, including 408 to and from the UK.
As of 10am on Saturday, 23 departures and 25 arrivals had been canceled in the UK, according to figures from aviation analytics firm Cirium.
The transport secretary, Louise Haigh, said the airports’ IT systems were “back and working normally”.
She said: “We are always in communication with the industry. There are no known safety or security issues yet arising from the outage.”
But she said: “Some delays and a small number of canceled flights are expected today.”
Travelers faced long queues at Heathrow on Saturday and reported problems checking in to British Airways flights.
Long check-in queues could be seen at Gatwick airport on Saturday.
Doug Bannister, chief executive of the Port of Dover, said hundreds of displaced air passengers had arrived in hopes of taking a ferry.
He said: “We operate a turn and go system here. However, we insist that you book on busy days, even if people are doing this on the drive down.”
Bannister said the port was expecting more than 10,000 cars on Saturday, up from 8,000 the day before. “No traffic jams in Dover town so far. The entrance roads are busy but moving. Everything is going well.”
Travel association Abta urged holidaymakers to check with suppliers if there were “any additional steps” they might need to take.
Train travelers were also affected. On Friday hundreds of passengers were stranded at London Euston station after trains were canceled or cancelled. The questions lasted until Saturday morning. At London Waterloo, passengers were unable to buy tickets from machines at the station, and in Paddington, QR code scanners stopped working.
Several US airlines and airports across Asia said they were restarting, with check-in services restored in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, and back to normal in India, Indonesia and airport Changi in Singapore on Saturday afternoon.
“The check-in systems are back to normal [at Thailand’s five major airports],” Airports of Thailand president Keerati Kitmanawat told reporters at Bangkok’s Don Mueang airport. “We don’t have long queues at the airports like we had yesterday.”
Atlanta airport, the world’s busiest by passenger traffic, said it was not affected by the outage but was working with “airline partners” who were.
While some airports halted all flights, airline staff at other airports resorted to manual check-in for passengers.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initially ordered that all flights be grounded “regardless of destination”, although airlines later said they were restoring their services and working through the backlog.
India’s largest airline, IndiGo, said operations had been resolved, in a statement posted on X.
“While the outage has been resolved and our systems are back online, we are working diligently to resume normal operations, and we expect this process to extend into the weekend,” the carrier said Saturday.
A passenger told Agence France-Presse that the situation was returning to normal at the Delhi airport with only minor delays to international flights.
Low-cost carrier AirAsia said it was still trying to get back online, and was “working around the clock to recover its departure control systems”. He advised passengers to arrive early at airports and be ready for “manual check-in” at airline counters.
Chinese state media said Beijing’s airports had not been affected.
In Europe, major airports including Berlin, which suspended all flights earlier on Friday, said departures and arrivals were resuming.
The software update that caused global havoc came from the US cyber security company, CrowdStrike, which left many Microsoft Windows users facing the “blue screen of death” as their computers did not start.
CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz said he was “deeply sorry” and clarified that it was “not a security incident or a cyber incident”.
GP practices in the UK said they could not see patient records or book appointments, and pharmacy services were also disrupted.
On Saturday, Nick Kaye, chairman of the National Pharmacy Association, which represents independent community pharmacies, said patients collecting prescriptions this weekend could still be affected.
“Systems are largely back online and the delivery of medicines has resumed in many community pharmacies today following the global IT outage,” he said.
“However, yesterday’s outage caused backlogs and we expect services to be disrupted this weekend as the pharmacies recover.
“We advise people to be patient when visiting their local pharmacy as some may still be prioritizing those patients with emergency prescriptions from their GP.”
