Nigerian local flights not affected by Microsoft’s software glitch

• International arrivals delayed at MMA

Local flights in Nigeria suffered little or no impact from the global information technology outage on Friday when glitches in Mocrosoft security software updates hung millions of computers, affecting flight schedules at major world airports.

Although Microsoft announced that the problems has been fixed, experts warn that ripple effects may be felt throughout the weekend as  systems begin to crawl back to normal operating speed.

“We are actively supporting customers to assist in their recovery,” CrowdStrike whose update was responsible for bringing down a number of IT systems globally stated.

According to aviation analytics company, Cirium, more than 5,000 flights were canceled globally as of 3:30 p.m. Eastern, about 4.6% of all scheduled commercial flights for the day. And more than 2,000 flights were canceled in the United States because of the outage.

Sources at various airline offices in the country told our correspondents that whereas local flight schedules ran very smoothly in the day, very few international airlines made timely arrival.

According to Airportia, international arrivals including Air France (AF132 2), KLM (KL587 2) and Delta (DL54) all delayed or arrived late at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport (MMA), Lagos.

However, most international flights from African countries arrived as scheduled, indicating minimal impact of the global tech outage on the continents aviation industry.

Elsewhere in the world, over thousands of flights were delayed or outrightly cancelled after the world woke to experience blue screen situation affecting millions of computers in over 500 companies.

The African aviation resilience yesterday might be a rare advantage of operating dated technology as indicated by an American airline, Southwest, which also defied the tech shock by sticking to a 32 year old version of the Microsoft Windows 3.1 software.

Other American companies using Windows 3.1 including Southwest, UPS and FedEx, also declared no operating issues with their computers despite the outage caused by cyber security firm, CrowdStrike.

Southwest told passengers and airports that its operations are going off without a hitch. And the major portions of Southwest’s systems are reportedly built on Windows 95 and Windows 3.1, which is something the company has come under fire for in the past several years.

The American Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hasn’t been affected by the outage and said it is working with several airlines on the outage.

CrowdStrike owns more than 10 different security and IT tools and, according to the company’s website, is involved with almost 300 of the Fortune 500 companies, six out of the top 10 health care providers, eight of the top 10 financial services firms and eight of the top 10 technology firms.

Devices using Windows Client and Windows Server that automatically installed a CrowdStrike security update Friday morning had got stuck in a restarting state or the “blue screen of death” (BSOD) which locks users out of their computers.

Microsoft, in a post on X early morning Friday, said that while the “underlying cause has been fixed,” the “residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services.”

Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity consultant, stated that the problem is that resolving the issue requires a manual reboot for each device affected. For the large-scale companies and industries that are impacted, there isn’t a way to automate the reboot — each individual device affected has to be addressed.

“There is a workaround, but it requires manually tampering with Windows systems files in recovery mode,” Olejnik told the outlet. “Such practice is in general not advised ordinarily, as mistakes may cause other problems.”

He said affected companies need to figure out how to deploy large numbers of professionals to go through and update each of their devices one by one.

The Oracle Today reports that major airports across the globe have reported issues with international and domestic flights. South Korea’s largest airport, Incheon International Airport, is dealing with delays across a lot of low-cost airlines because of issues with ticketing and other services.

In Germany, all flights at Berlin-Brandenburg Airport were temporarily suspended, although some departures started to resume around 10 a.m. CET.

Dutch airline KLM also announced it was affected and that operations would be suspended until further notice. Switzerland’s largest airport in Zurich announced that planes were not allowed to land Friday morning.