Thousands of passengers face new flight cancellations and delays following global IT outage

Thousands of passengers across the UK have faced further flight cancellations and delays as airlines recover from the impact of one of the biggest global IT outages on record.

Dozens of flights were canceled Saturday, with data showing 73 cancellations as of 4 p.m. Saturday, in addition to more than 400 flights grounded Friday. That’s about 75,000 passengers over the two days who had booked a flight and didn’t make it to their destination.

According to aviation analyst Cirium, more than 9,000 flights have been cancelled worldwide so far.

The worst affected passengers on Saturday were British Airways passengers flying to and from London Heathrow, with easyJet grounding eight flights to and from London Gatwick.

“We are stuck in Tenerife, where Tui seems to have abandoned us,” said Sarah Murdoch, one of around 6,000 holidaymakers whose trips with the tourism giant were unexpectedly extended due to the outage affecting Windows systems.

“We waited for hours at the airport with no Tui representatives in sight. We had to organise our own accommodation and are flying home tonight with Jet2.” Tui says all its overseas customers are looked after by resort teams.

At least Ms Murdoch had enjoyed the holiday she had booked before the CloudStrike IT “upgrade” – which Microsoft said impacted 8.5 million Windows devices – put an end to her trip home.

Thousands more have seen their long-awaited package holidays with Tui cancelled without notice.

Tui was hit even harder than the UK’s major airlines, as its crew management system was directly impacted by the software disaster. On what was expected to be the busiest day this decade for flights out of UK airports, Tui cancelled 64 flights.

To prevent the situation from becoming unmanageable, Tui has taken the remarkable step of cancelling thousands of holidays – an act that will cost the company millions of pounds in lost revenue, as well as in the loss of disappointed customers.

The company, Europe’s largest travel agency, is offering them vouchers for future trips in addition to full refunds or transfers to upcoming holidays on favourable terms.

But even customers whose holidays have not been cancelled are facing severe disruption. Tui passengers in Manchester who were expecting to fly to Cancun in Mexico at midday on Saturday found their Boeing 787 would have to make a short return trip to Palma de Mallorca, delaying the transatlantic journey by at least eight hours.

Many people complained on social media and were immediately targeted by scammers who created dozens of “imposter accounts” on X/Twitter in an attempt to scam frustrated travelers. CrowdStrike itself warned of the threat of criminals looking to exploit the fallout from the outage for their own gain. The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the UK’s equivalent of GCHQ, also issued an alert about hackers sending out fake software patches pretending to be CrowdStrike.

A Tui spokesperson said: “Due to the global IT issue at airports and airlines around the world, TUI’s overall service level has been significantly impacted and we would like to apologise to everyone affected.

“While the initial IT issue was beyond our control, a system critical to the operation of our airline remained unstable late into the night (Friday). “We have therefore taken the difficult decision to cancel a number of outbound flights and delay a number of return flights to the UK.

“We sincerely apologize to all customers affected, as we understand how disappointing this situation has been and we recognize that many customers were already at the airport awaiting their departure.”

The 64 Tui departures grounded on Friday represented one in six flights cancelled to, from and within the UK, according to aviation analyst Cirium.

European air passenger rights rules state that any airline cancelling a flight must provide stranded travellers with an alternative way to reach their destination as soon as possible, as well as a hotel and meals while they wait.

In practice, however, in the event of serious disruption, airlines transfer their obligation to the passenger, leaving the latter to find a room and an alternative return flight.

The hauliers will have collectively lost millions of pounds in what was supposed to be the most lucrative time of the year.

Beyond the tourism sector, NHS England has warned that GP services will be “disrupted” next week due to the IT outage. GP practices across England reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records on Friday because their EMIS appointment booking and patient records system was down.

NHS England said on Saturday afternoon that its systems were “back online in most areas” but were “still running slightly slower than usual”.

An NHS spokesperson said: “As practices recover from the loss of IT systems on Friday, there may be continued disruption, particularly to GP services, in some areas until next week as practices work to reschedule appointments.

“The advice for Monday remains that patients should attend their appointments as normal, unless otherwise advised.”

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) said patients collecting their prescriptions could still face disruption this weekend.

Nick Kaye, chairman of the NPA, which represents independent community pharmacies in the UK, said: “Systems are largely back online and medicine deliveries have resumed to many community pharmacies today following the global IT outage.

“However, yesterday’s outage will have caused delays and we expect services to continue to be disrupted this weekend as pharmacies recover.”