Worldwide tech outage continues to impact Ontario, Canada and other countries
Published July 20, 2024 at 10:01 am
Airlines, businesses and health-care networks are among those busy on Saturday dealing with the lingering effects of Friday’s worldwide technology outage that disrupted commercial flights, hospitals and banks in addition to numerous others in Canada and around the globe.
Many of those impacted in the GTA, throughout Ontario and across Canada — and around the world — are working to get their systems back online after the widespread issue grounded flights, knocked banks offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services worldwide.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack, but rather a problem related to a Microsoft Windows system update. CrowdStrike provides software to numerous companies worldwide.
The largest lingering effect is reportedly on air travel, though a relatively small number of flights at Pearson Airport in Mississauga and across Canada were cancelled on Friday compared to other airports and airlines around the world.
One specific issue related to the air travel sector is that many planes and flight crews are now in the wrong places after being grounded on Friday.
According to Cirium, an aviation analytics company, 56 of the 93 cancelled flights originating in Canada (as of 12:30 p.m. on Friday) were flights to be operated by Toronto-based Porter Airlines.
Canada’s two largest carriers were not impacted nearly to that extent, Cirium said in an email update on Friday afternoon.
“Air Canada and WestJet have experienced limited disruptions. Generally, the Canadian airlines are operating on time; the U.S. carriers flying from Canada have had departure delays,” Friday’s update stated (see chart below).
On Friday morning, officials at Pearson Airport, Canada’s biggest and busiest airport, said the global IT outage could lead to ongoing flight delays and cancellations throughout the day. Airport officials urged travellers to contact their airlines directly for specific flight information.
As of Saturday morning, there was no immediate update on the status of Porter Airlines flights scheduled out of Pearson. However, the airport’s online flight status page showed a number of Porter flights were listed as being “on time.”
U.S.-based Delta Airlines, meanwhile, showed two flight cancellations out of Pearson on Saturday, one to Atlanta and the other to New York City (LaGuardia Airport).
The massive IT outage also impacted a number of health-care networks in Ontario, though Trillium Health Partners (which runs Mississauga and Credit Valley hospitals in Mississauga in addition to Queensway Health Centre in Etobicoke) reported no issues.
Health-care systems that were impacted, to some degree, include:
- Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa
- Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto
- North York General Hospital
- University Health Network in Toronto
The following chart shows the number of scheduled and cancelled flights, by airline, originating in Canada on Friday (as of 12:30 p.m. July 19):
(Source: Cirium)