Flights grounded at RDU as Microsoft takes blame for ‘major’ technical outage

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN/KDVR) — Microsoft has taken the blame for global technical issues that initially caused a ground stop for Frontier Airlines Thursday night at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. As of Friday morning, the same issues are being felt by Delta and American.

On Friday, Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike told the Associated Press that the issues are “not a security incident or cyberattack.” Instead, CEO George Kurtz said a “defect” was found in a single content update for Windows hosts.” He said, “This is not a security incident or cyberattack.”

Further, Kurtz said the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

The global issue has caused issues as far away as Australia where disruptions are not only being experienced by airlines, but also by telecommunications providers, banks, and media broadcasters.

Frontier Airlines lifted its ground stop Thursday night after a technical problem left passengers waiting in terminals for hours on Thursday evening, including at RDU.

In a released statement, the airline said its flight operations were “impacted by a major Microsoft technical outage.”

Frontier also said it was “working with outside vendors to restore normal operations.”

The airline also said the outage affected other companies and said booking, check-in and access to boarding passes and some flights “may be impacted.”

Frontier customers were left without answers after their flights were canceled.

CBS 17 crews captured video of passengers caught in long-standing lines inside Terminal 2 at RDU, as well as dozens of people sitting down on the floor.

Later in the night, the airline announced the ground stop had been lifted and its systems are gradually normalizing.

“We are in the process of resuming flight operations,” the statement said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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