Airlines were gradually coming back online Saturday after global carriers, banks and financial institutions were thrown into turmoil by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program.
Passenger crowds had swelled at airports on Friday to wait for news as dozens of flights were cancelled and operators struggled to keep services on track, after an update to a program operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide.
Multiple US airlines and airports across Asia said they were now resuming operations, with check-in services restored in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, and mostly back to normal in India, Indonesia and at Singapore鈥檚 Changi Airport as of Saturday afternoon.
鈥楾he check-in systems have come back to normal (at Thailand鈥檚 five major airports). There are no long queues at the airports as we experienced yesterday,鈥� Airports of Thailand president Keerati Kitmanawat told reporters at Don Mueang airport in Bangkok.
Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity software.
CrowdStrike said it had rolled out a fix for the problem and the company鈥檚 boss, George Kurtz, told US news channel CNBC he wanted to 鈥榩ersonally apologise to every organisation, every group and every person who has been impacted鈥�.
It also said it could take a few days to return to normal.