90s tech helped this airline continue amid global Microsoft outage
Microsoft's latest outage badly disrupted airline operations in several countries. Almost every flight was grounded due to a CrowdStrike system update error, impacting almost everything from travel to mobile ordering at Starbucks. Amid such a global outage, US-based Southwest Airlines continued to operate without disruption. Remarkably, Southwest, along with UPS and FedEx, remained unaffected due to its use of Windows 3.1, an operating system that is now 32 years old.
Legacy systems prevented Southwest from crashing
Southwest's resilience is attributed to its use of legacy systems. Major components of the airline's systems are built on Windows 95 and Windows 3.1. Despite past criticism for not updating its systems, in this instance, the older software prevented a total shutdown for the airline.
Other airlines grappled with CrowdStrike outage
Several airlines, including American, Delta, Spirit, Frontier, United, and Allegiant reported issues due to the CrowdStrike outage. Airports worldwide also experienced scheduling system crashes after the update error. This caused chaos for millions of travelers. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed it was working with several airlines to address the outage. On a related note, a defective McAfee update once caused worldwide meltdown of Windows XP PCs.
Microsoft CEO addressed global outage
Microsoft, at the center of this crisis with CrowdStrike, stated that the root cause of the problem has been fixed. However, it could take days before everything is fully resolved. Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella commented on X, stating, "We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online."
