Phuket Airport dodges CrowdStrike woes

The outages began late Friday (July 19) as the CrowdStrike update played havoc on Windows systems affecting major public infrastructure and corporate transport systems around the world.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT) reported the computer system issue affecting airline services on Friday afternoon "CAAT has been coordinating with relevant agencies to resolve the situation. and facilitate passengers to travel to their destinations without being stuck.

"Initially, passengers were able to be transported to destinations within the country. Although some flights were delayed due to the system failure, CAAT also received support from airport operators and air traffic operators, which was extended the processing time to be able to fly as planned, the national airline regulator said.

"However, the problem arises from the computer operating system used to facilitate passenger service, which still takes time to correct further, and it may still happen again during this three- day holiday. CAAT recommends that passengers follow news from airlines through various communication channels and asks passengers to allow time for traveling to the airport or check in online in advance to prevent problems that may occur and to be able to pass on time to board the plane," the state agency advised.

By yesterday morning (July 20), Kerati Kijmanawat, President at Airports of Thailand (AoT), clarified that the outage affected only the Departure Control System (DCS) of some airline groups.

At Phuket International Airport, flights by Thai AirAsia, AirAsia Berhad (AK), Firefly Airlines (FY), Scoot (TR), Indigo (6E) and Jetstar Asia (3K) were affected, AoT had earlier confirmed.

Passengers were asked "to allow at least four hours for travel to avoid any issues caused by current ground systems failures".

The system was restored at 2am yesterday, but experienced another malfunction at 9am before returning to normal operation by 11am, Dr Kerati said. Passenger queues and check-in times were back to normal, he assured.

Dr. Keerati reported that approximately 200 flights were affected, but all were able to depart, with delays ranging from one ot three hours for some flights. Only one flight, from Bangkok to Osaka, was canceled, he said.

The airline announced that no passengers were left stranded; some opted to change flights or request refunds, which were handled according to the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand's regulations.

AoT Phuket did not report any flight delays or cancellations due to the systems outage.

Dr Keerati praised the cooperation from airlines and airport operators worldwide, who provided ground staff and passenger service personnel to assist travelers. AoT also provided food and drinks for passengers waiting to check in during the disruption, he noted.

GLOBAL IMPACT

Planes were gradually taking off again Saturday (July 20) after global airlines, banks and media were thrown into turmoil by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus programme, reported AFP.

Passenger crowds had swelled at airports on Friday as dozens of flights were cancelled after an update to a programme operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide.

By Saturday, officials said the situation had returned virtually to normal in airports across Germany and France, as Paris prepared to welcome millions for the Olympic Games starting on Friday.

Multiple US airlines and airports across Asia said they had resumed operations, with check-in services restored in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, and mostly back to normal in India, Indonesia and at Singapore's Changi Airport as of Saturday afternoon.

CROWDSTRIKE APOLOGISES

Microsoft estimated Saturday that 8.5 million Windows devices were affected in the global IT crash, adding that the number amounted to less than 1% of all Windows machines.

"While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services", it said.

Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity software.

In a Saturday blog post, CrowdStrike said it had released an update on Thursday night that had caused a system crash and the infamous "blue screen of death" fatal error message.

CrowdStrike said it had rolled out a fix for the problem, and the company's boss, George Kurtz, told US news channel CNBC he wanted to "personally apologise to every organisation, every group and every person who has been impacted".

The company also said it could take a few days for things to fully get back to normal.

Britain's National Health Service was hobbled by the crash on Friday, preventing doctors from accessing patient records and booking appointments.

"majority of systems ... are now coming back online in most areas, however they are still running slightly slower than usual", an NHS spokesperson said, warning of disruption continuing into next week.

Media companies were also hit, with Britain's Sky News saying the glitch had ended its Friday morning news broadcasts. Australia's ABC also reported major difficulties.

A Australian, British and German authorities warned of an increase in scam and phishing attempts following the outage, including people offering to help reboot computers and asking for personal information or credit card details.

Banks in Kenya and Ukraine reported issues with their digital services, some mobile phone carriers were disrupted and customer services in a number of companies went down.

"The scale of this outage is unprecedented, and will no doubt go down in history," said Junade Ali of Britain's Institution of Engineering and Technology, adding that the last incident approaching the same scale was in 2017.

FLIGHT CHAOS

While some airports halted all flights, in others airline staff resorted to manual check-ins for passengers, leading to long lines and frustrated travellers.

Thousands of US flights were grounded, although airlines later said they were re-establishing their services and working through the backlog.

A senior US administration official said Friday that "our understanding is that flight operations have resumed across the country, although some congestion remains".

India's largest airline Indigo said Saturday that operations had been "resolved", adding in a statement on X that the process of resuming normal operations would "extend into the weekend".

Singapore's Changi Airport also said check-in operations have returned to normal.

Low-cost carrier AirAsia said it was still trying to get back online and had been "working around the clock towards recovering its departure control systems".

Chinese state media said Beijing's airports had not been affected.

COMMON CAUSE'

Companies were left patching up their systems and trying to assess the damage, even as officials tried to tamp down panic by ruling out foul play.

According to CrowdStrike's Saturday blog, the issue was "not the result of or related to a cyberattack".

Although CrowdStrike had rolled out a fix, many experts questioned the ease of such a process.

"While experienced users can implement the workaround, expecting millions to do so is impractical," said Oli Buckley, a professor at Britain's Loughborough University.

Other experts said the incident should prompt a widespread reconsideration of how reliant societies are on a handful of tech companies.

"We need to be aware that such software can be a common cause of failure for multiple systems at the same time," said John McDermid, a professor at York University in Britain.

Infrastructure should be designed "to be resilient against such common cause problems", he added.