Global tech outage causing major flight delays at Miami, Fort Lauderdale airports

A massive worldwide Microsoft system outage was causing havoc Friday morning at South Florida’s airports.

At Miami International Airport, the outage is “affecting all airlines [and] is currently delaying departures and arrivals… Passengers are urged to contact their airline to confirm their flight status before coming to MIA this morning so they can make other travel arrangements if necessary,” the airport said on X.

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is having a similar issue and stated, “An early morning system-wide technology issue is impacting some airline and passenger processing operations at U.S. airports, including #FLL. Flight delays are expected, so travelers should check with their airline for updated flight status before coming to #FLL.”

American Airlines, the major carrier out of MIA, said on X that “ As of 5:00 a.m. ET, we have been able to safely re-establish our operation.”

But that didn’t assuage travelers, who were posting their anguish on American’s social media site on X.

“can you make an announcement to the charlotte airport ??? people are wondering what’s happening all screens are blue,” posted the Zulu at 6:30 a.m.

“People in the airports SPEAK UP! Is this actually fixed?” posted JustLorenzo on X at 6:30 a.m.

The global outage also affected some banks, hospitals and municipalities.

The city of Miami posted on X at 8:23 a.m. that it, too, was impacted by the tech outage, affecting its online customer services.

The widespread outage is linked to the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.,” said CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz on X.

Memorial Healthcare System, one of the public hospital systems in Broward County, on Friday morning told the Miami Herald it has not experienced any outages and is “serving the community as usual.”