NYC officials give update on global tech outage: Flight delays, services impacted

NEW YORK – New York state and city officials are monitoring the widespread technology outage that caused disruptions around the world Friday.

In a statement Saturday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that agencies are working around the clock this weekend to continue to remediate systems. 

The outage disrupted business all around the world and continues to impact flights in and out of NYC Saturday. 

NYC global tech outage

NYC Mayor Eric Adams says that in one day they’ve reduced the number of devices impacted across government from around 100,000 to nearly 55,000.

NYC Schools had critical apps related to finance, transportation, family-facing applications, and student-related applications, as well as network-related services operational by the end of day Friday.

Adams says agency IT and cybersecurity teams are working 24/7 to identify and fix any remaining issues.

Hohul said in a statement Saturday that she’s also in close contact with cyber, IT, and emergency response teams, and can assure New Yorkers that they are doing all they can to quickly restore services.

Officials in NYC, including New York City Mayor Eric Adams, continue to reiterate that the incident was not a cyberattack.

Who was impacted?

Hochul says critical life safety services, including 911 remain operational, and New Yorkers should continue to call 911. I have also directed that forbearance be granted for those that were unable to conduct business with the state due to the outage, such as individuals needing DMV license renewals.

“Other things like systems that belong to our taxi and limousine commission, systems that belong to our Department of Buildings, like licensing and permitting systems. Some of those systems have mild impacts where the public-face components and, like the some of the back-end stuff is impacted,” Matthew Fraser, chief technology officer for the NYC Office of Technology & Innovation said Friday. 

What broke?

TechRadar’s editor at large, Lance Ulanoff, says CrowdStrike the global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike “made a little update that broke everything.” 

Ulanoff says he’s also taking the company’s word for it that it was not a cyberattack. 

“Usually with a cyberattack, it takes longer to figure out how to fix,” he says. 

He believes that there was a coding issue when they attempted to make a system-wide update in the middle of the night. 

He went on to say that CrowdStrike knew exactly what the update was going to be, but didn’t realize it had not been “regression tested” well enough to ensure it wasn’t going to break all the systems.

“They don’t expect it to break things, but updates can kind of confuse systems,” he said. 

The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta.

NYC flight status

Check the status of each airport below:

LaGuardia Airport delays

• For more information from the FAA, click HERE.

Newark Airport flight status

• For more information from the FAA, click HERE.

JFK Airport flight status

• For more information from the FAA, click HERE.