How the global IT outage is impacting Philadelphia services, transit and airport

This story originally appeared on 6abc.

An IT outage is impacting potentially millions of people worldwide, including in the Philadelphia region.

Airlines, airports and banks are among major services impacted.

What we know about the issue

Crowdstrike, the U.S. cybersecurity company, has admitted to being responsible for the error and is working to correct it.

“Crowdstrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows 4 related to the Falcon sensor. Please monitor the status via the tech alert on our customer support portal,” according to Crowdstrike technical help line.

Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz posted on X that the company is actively working with customers impacted, adding that Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.

Microsoft services are also impacted.

“We’re investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services,” Microsoft said in a statement released on social media Friday morning.

At 3:55 a.m. ET, Microsoft said multiple services are continuing to see improvements.

Kurtz said the outages are not a “security incident or cyberattack,” and that the issue has been “identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

PHL impact

Lines are long at Philadelphia International Airport Friday morning due to the global outage but some airlines are slowly getting back up and running.

American Airlines says it is back to normal operations after earlier asking the FAA for a global ground stop on all flights amid global IT outages, according to ABC News.

“Earlier this morning, a technical issue with a vendor impacted multiple carriers, including American. As of 5 a.m. ET, we have been able to safely re-establish our operation. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience,” American Airlines told Action News in a statement.

As of 6:25 a.m. EST, Allegiant and Spirit had also canceled their ground stops.

United Airlines said as of 6:30 a.m. EST, some flights were resuming, but customers should expect disruptions throughout Friday.

Delta posted on X just before 6:30 a.m. that it has paused its global flight schedule and are working to resolve the issue, adding that they are working on issuing a travel waiver to allow customers to manage and change their itinerary.

Several airlines made statements on X saying that they were following manual check-in and boarding processes and warned of delays due to technical problems.

At least three major U.S. airlines — American Airlines, United and Delta — had asked the FAA for a global ground stop on all flights, according to an alert from the FAA on Friday morning.

The FAA told air traffic controllers to tell airborne pilots that airlines are currently experiencing communication issues.

Meanwhile, flights that were in the air were able to stay in the air, but no American, United or Delta flights were taking off.

PHL officials say passengers need to check with their airlines for updates.

SEPTA impact

SEPTA officials have told Action News that all of their transportation operations are fine. However, the transit agency has posted on X that many routes are experiencing delays and cancellations due to “operator unavailability.”

Amtrak impact

Amtrak trains are running and are on time. Those who already have their Amtrak tickets are ok, but riders are not able to buy tickets at the stations with credit cards due to the CrowdStrike issue. If you need to buy a ticket, it is recommended that you bring cash.

Emergency services

Local 911 centers that are also experiencing outages, like in Bucks County, are able to receive emergency calls. Calls are coming in, but dispatchers are having to manually take down the information before radioing it out, officials told Action News.