Global IT outage causes flight delays, cancellations at Columbia airport

Flight delays and cancellations are expected throughout the day at Columbia Metropolitan Airport as airlines and other businesses whose operations rely on technology recover from a massive global IT outage.

The airport announced just after 6 a.m. Friday on X , formerly known as Twitter, that flights had been grounded until further notice due to the global ground stop impacting all airports. Some flights at the West Columbia airport have since resumed, spokeswoman Kim Crafton wrote in an email, but residual delays and cancellations may continue to impact customers for the remainder of the day.

As of 9:45 a.m., the three airlines that fly out of Columbia – Delta, American and United – had canceled seven total flights, Crafton said.

Several other local flights have been delayed due to the outage, which appears to have been caused by Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm whose software many companies use to protect against cyberattacks. The company said the outage stemmed from a software update that caused machines running the Microsoft Windows operating system to crash.

Customers scheduled to fly out of the Columbia airport Friday are asked to check their airline’s mobile app for the most up-to-date flight status prior to coming to the airport.