CrowdStrike Outage Led to 5,000+ Flight Cancellations in One Day ✈️

What we’re showing

This graphic shows daily flight cancellations globally, based on data from FlightAware.

Key takeaway

Late on Thursday, July 18, a faulty update from CrowdStrike caused 8.5 million Windows devices to crash, resulting in outages across many different industries.

This included the aviation sector, which saw over 5,000 flights cancelled on Friday, July 19. This was 270% higher than the average over the past three days.

The scale of CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike is one of the world’s largest cybersecurity companies, with more than 20,000 subscription customers globally. According to its marketing materials, half the Fortune 500 uses its software.

Since the outages began, CrowdStrike’s stock (Ticker: CRWD) has fallen nearly 30%.