The world’s largest information technology outage in history halted global operations Friday morning, affecting multiple businesses in Dallas.

Early Friday morning, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike experienced a major crash, causing Microsoft cloud computing services to shut down.

Following the crash, major banks, airlines, hospitals, 911 services in several U.S. states, train stations, media outlets, and others experienced technological service shutdowns.

In a press release, the City of Dallas assured residents that its technology team was working quickly to resolve the issue.

“The City of Dallas is aware of the issue affecting many organizations globally related to CrowdStrike. The Dallas Information and Technology Services Department is actively assessing the impact on city systems and working with the vendor to remediate the issue as quickly as possible to all services,” the release read. “The City’s top priority is to maintain stability and minimize disruptions to Public Safety and Critical Infrastructure operations.”

Three major U.S. airlines — American, Delta, and United — were forced to ground all flights due to the outage.

Stranded passengers in airports posted videos of all the TV screens showing blue “error” messages as frustrated passengers crowded around their gates.

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport saw major delays due to the technology issue.

“With the global technology issue impacting several airlines this morning, please check your flight status with your airline prior to heading to the airport,” DFW Airport posted on X at 4:54 a.m. Friday morning. “Longer lines and wait times are possible so please allow extra time.”

Footage from DFW Airport shows Spirit Airlines employees passing out hand-written boarding passes after the airline posted a statement saying that due to the outage, they were unable to rebook guests whose travel plans had been disrupted.

Dallas Love Field Airport also posted on X, advising guests to check their flight status with their airline before heading to the airport.

Photos from across the globe show airports filled with passengers waiting on delayed planes and canceled flights. The tech glitch was responsible for more than half of the 1,352 U.S. flight delays and cancellations before 7 a.m. CT on Friday, per NBC.

 

Texas driver’s license offices were closed on Friday, halting business across the state due to the outage impacting the Department of Public Safety’s servers.

“CLOSURE NOTICE: DPS Driver License Offices (DLOs) across the state are currently closed due to a technical issue. Customers with appointments should have been notified. Our IT teams are working diligently on a fix, however there is no current estimate on when DLOs will reopen,” said DPS on X.

Additionally, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office said multiple systems were down due to the Microsoft outage.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) assured customers Friday morning that its grid operations had not been impacted.

“ERCOT grid operations have not been affected by the global technology outages,” ERCOT posted on X. “At this time, the grid is operating under normal conditions with no reliability issues.”

While the global shutdown has caused chaos and panic, CrowdStrike was quick to assure the public that the crash was not due to a security attack.

“Today was not a security or cyber[attack] incident. Our customers remain fully protected,” claimed CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz on X. “We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption.”

Author