MD Courts Closed, Flights Canceled At BWI Airport By Tech Outage

MARYLAND — A Microsoft outage early Friday morning crippled computers across the globe, delaying flights, shutting down 911 and banking systems and even preventing TV broadcasts in some places.

Maryland's court system is closed to the public Friday because of the outage. A news release said, "all Maryland courts, offices, and facilities will be closed to the public today but will remain open for emergency matters. All clerks’ offices are closed."

"We are closely monitoring outages at major medical systems and state agencies," Gov. Wes Moore said in a press release. "I want to assure the public that leadership across the State routinely conducts thorough exercises to prepare for an emergency like this one. We are already seeing many impacted systems come back online, and we will continue to provide guidance, coordination, resources, and support to our partners until this issue is fully resolved."

A fix is underway, but the ripple effect inconvenienced Maryland travelers.

Eleven flights were canceled and 132 were delayed to or from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Friday, the FlightAware tracker said at 9:45 a.m.

Some departures and arrivals resumed, but there were still delayed passengers by mid-morning. Airport workers distributed water to the waiting travelers.

BWI Airport spokesperson Jonathan Dean issued this statement Friday at 9:30 a.m.:

Operations of several airlines at BWI Marshall Airport remain impacted by a global tech outage. Locally here at BWI Marshall, some airline flights, both arrivals and departures, are operating. The airlines continue working to fully restore their operations. Travelers should confirm flight status with their airlines before heading to the airport. Airport administration personnel are distributing water for customers in line for airline check-in. We thank customers for their continued patience.

WJZ video showed crowds of travelers waiting in limbo at the airport. A FOX photo captured the long lines near the ticket counters.

"A global technology issue is impacting several airlines," BWI Airport said Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter. "Please confirm flight status with your airline prior to coming to the airport. Be patient if traveling today."

All Delta flights were paused globally, but some departures resumed by 7:53 a.m.

Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport both posted on social media that "multiple airlines are reporting system outages that are impacting flight operations" and that any passengers should check the status of their flights before heading to the airports.

According to FlightAware, Reagan had about 100 delays and 44 cancellations as of 9 a.m. Friday. Dulles similarly at 9 a.m. had 37 cancellations and 100 delays.

The Washington, D.C. Metro said its website went down, but trains ran as scheduled Friday morning. Reports that Metrorail's service was suspended are false.

Patch could not find any public safety or emergency responder systems that were down in Maryland.

The Maryland Department of Emergency Management partially activated its emergency operations center Friday at 8 a.m.

Related: Global Tech Outage Grounds Flights, Knocks Banks, Hospitals Offline

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack — and that a fix was on the way. The company said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.

CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz posted this statement Friday morning on X:

CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.

The problem was first detected early Friday when computers in Australia running Microsoft Windows would not turn on, showing users the "blue screen of death."

"The underlying cause has been fixed, however, residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services," Microsoft said Friday at 6:46 a.m. on X. "We're conducting additional mitigations to provide relief."

DownDectector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected — although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services.

The Associated Press contributed material to this report.

Editor's Note: A previous version of this story accurately listed the number of BWI Airport flight cancelations for the 24 hours before publication, but that included a period of time Thursday before the Friday outage. There were 11 flight cancelations on Friday, the day of the outage, the last Patch checked.