Airlines Report Cargo Operations ‘Severely Affected’ by Outage

Delays and backlogs are expected across the air cargo industry, following the Microsoft IT outage.

Scan Global Logistics said that the CrowdStrike outage “may cause bottlenecks and delays with several of our airline partners in the coming days. SGL systems are not affected by the issues.”

It added that although affected company CrowdStrike has identified and applied a fix to the issue, “airlines and airports worldwide are reporting disruptions and flight cancellations. We are working with high focus to avoid impacts to your shipments as much as possible.”

Flexport said: ” While the situation is still developing, Flexport is unaffected. Our systems are fully operational and experiencing no disruptions.

“Initial reports confirm significant disruptions at numerous ports, airports, transportation systems, and customs systems worldwide. We are actively gathering information to identify which of our suppliers and partners have been impacted. Should your shipments be affected, we will reach out to you directly.”

Several carriers said they have been “severely” affected by the issue.

AF-KLM Cargo said the impact was significant. A spokesperson informed: “The impact on our operations is severe, both in Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam airports.

“Contingency processes are active. Lots of systems are down, even staff laptops are not working.

“We are taking mitigating measures to handle the current situation and the consequential future effects.

“It will mean delays and even cancellations. It is a worldwide Windows-related issue, and we have no idea how long it will take to resolve.

“The measures [we are taking] are focusing on how to handle the most urgent shipments and how to manage the backlog that will develop.”

Lufthansa Cargo too said it was a “very dynamic situation”.

“Due to an IT malfunction, there are currently disruptions in global air traffic. Lufthansa Cargo is one of the many airlines affected.

“The technical disruptions have mostly been resolved and operations at our hubs are returning to normal. Many of Lufthansa Cargo’s global system partners were also confronted with significant disruptions. As a result, there may still be individual delays or rebookings in the transport of shipments.

“The handling processes at Lufthansa Cargo’s hubs in Frankfurt and Munich were amongst others to be heavily affected.

“We are constantly monitoring and discussing the dynamic situation with our system partners with the aim of continuing to offer our customers stable solutions for the transportation of their freight.”

American Airlines Cargo, one of the three major US airlines reportedly hit, said in a statement that a “technical issue impacted multiple carriers, including American. As of 5am ET we have been able to safely re-establish our operation.”

Cargolux sent a message to customers, noting that while its flights were not impacted, some services are.

“Clients are kindly invited to reach out via phone or email for quotes and booking requests and will be notified of any changes to the current situation,” it said.

Dubai International Airport said it had resumed normal operations, but passengers noted on social media there were delays.

Swissport is reportedly affected, but it is not clear where, or what. The handler didn’t respond to requests for information; neither did WFS or dnata.

Some ports were also affected. Maersk said in a statement: “We can confirm that Maersk also was affected by the global IT outage. The issues briefly affected some of our operated terminals, but all were back in operations within a few hours.”

Only CMA CGM Group said “there was no impact on our side, across the whole group”. Given the problems at many airports and ports across the world, it would seem highly unlikely that it won’t face some knock-on effects at least.

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