How the global IT outage is impacting NYC services, transit, local airports

NEW YORK CITY (WABC) — An update from CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that services numerous industries, appears to have sparked a worldwide IT outage, affecting many businesses and government services, including in New York City and other local areas.

The outage affected Microsoft 365’s apps and services, a commonly used platform.

“We’re investigating an issue impacting users’ ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services,” Microsoft 365 Status said on X.

In its latest update, it said that, “Multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress.”

CITY SERVICES

Basic New York City services are operating, including 911 and 311, but agencies are having difficulty accessing many of their functions controlled by Microsoft 365.

Police are firefighters are being dispatched over their radios, but police officers cannot use their department issued phones and many desktop computer functions are not available.

A mayoral spokesperson said:

“We are aware of the global technical outage involving CrowdStrike and are currently assessing the full impact it may have on city operations. At this time, critical infrastructure and emergency operations, including the 911 call system, have not been impacted.

“As this outage only affects Windows-based devices receiving automatic updates, our team at NYC Office of Technology and Innovation has been working for the last few hours to halt any automatic updates and minimize potential service disruptions.

“NYC Office of Technology and Innovation is also currently sending around citywide guidance to all agencies with information on a manual workaround for impacted devices, and Chief Technology Officer Fraser has been directly in touch with CrowdStrike to identify the fastest path of resolution.

“All city IT departments will be prioritizing this work today.

“To be clear, we currently have no reason to believe this is anything other than a bad update from CrowdStrike.”

TRANSIT

Subways, buses and commuter rails are running, but the MTA is advising commuters that customer information systems that provide train and bus arrival information are unavailable. “Some MTA customer

information systems are temporarily offline due to a worldwide technical outage. Train and bus service is unaffected. Please listen for station and crew announcements,” it posted on its web site

AIRPORTS

The most significant impact is at the airports. FAA has a ground stop due to ongoing a communication issues

The ground stop impacts all flights from the airlines, regardless of their destination, said the FAA.

Delta, United and American Airlines were among the airlines that have issued statements saying they not flying at the moment.

However, American had some promising 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.”

Most airlines start flying their regular schedules 6 a.m., which is when the outage could start to really affect service and begin cascading throughout the day.

It’s unclear how long the ground stop will last.

Even when FAA clears general aviation to resume, airlines will have to make case by case decisions on when they can fly, everything from checking in passengers to communication with their planes.

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