Flights delayed as tech outage continues
Passengers flying with Ryanair from Cork Airport are being advised to arrive three hours early for flights as businesses reel from this morning’s global tech outage.
Airlines, transport services, and other businesses in Cork are facing major disruption due to the issue.
This morning, Ryanair confirmed it is experiencing disruption across its network due to a “global 3rd party IT outage” which the company said was out of its control.
Ryanair currently operates 29 routes from Cork Airport, including Alicante, Bordeaux, and Malaga.
“We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours before their scheduled departure time,” the airline said on X.
It is reported that flights have ben delayed in Cork and Dublin Airports due to the outage.
Aer Lingus said its flights are “mainly operating as normal” but that passenger should expect processing delays and should allow extra time for check-in, security, immigration, and boarding. The airline advised customers to check the Aer Lingus website or the mobile app for updates.
People in Cork who use the TFI Live and TFI Leap Top-Up apps may also experience problems with TFI confirming that both services are still working but at reduced capacity.
It is understood the outage was caused by an issue with a recent update to CrowdStrike, an American IT security service used by companies around the world.
The glitch has caused systems using Microsoft Windows to experience the ‘blue screen of death’ as computers are forced to reboot.
Dr Simon Woodworth, Lecturer in Business Information Systems at UCC, explained what is happening.
“CrowdStrike software is designed to protect Windows systems from cyberattack. The software keeps an eye out for viruses, malware, and attempts to attack the system from outside. When a Windows system boots up, if CrowdStrike is installed, then the software runs just after the PC is powered on. What happened here is that a specific piece of software called Falcon Sensor, after a faulty update, causes Windows to fail on startup,” said Dr Woodworth.
He continued: “The exact cause is unknown, but one possible cause is that the update was inadequately tested and a coding error crept through to the software that was released to users overnight.”
According to Dr Woodworth, although a fix has been announced, the knock-on effects of the outage could take some time to clean up. He also said he does not believe today’s outage was the result of a cyber-attack.