In the past two days, a global technology issue led to the cancellation of 10 flights in the UAE, significantly affecting operations at airports, airlines, and various other sectors worldwide. UAE’s airlines and airports experienced relatively minor disruptions. Cirium data shows that six out of 986 flights were cancelled on July 20, and four out of 975 flights were cancelled on July 19. The General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) confirmed that the worldwide technical outage had only minor effects on the operational processes of UAE’s airports and airlines. There were slight delays in check-in procedures for a few flights, as airlines switched to alternative systems, allowing check-in operations to continue normally. Dubai Airports quickly restored flight operations after a system outage affected check-in processes at Terminals 1 and 2.
Globally, approximately 104,000 flights were scheduled for July 20, with 1,848 cancellations by Friday afternoon UAE time. On July 19, when the technical glitch affected the global economy, 5,333 flights were cancelled. The US, Australia, India, Spain, Canada, Italy, the UK, and Germany were among the hardest-hit countries during these two days. The Crowdstrike glitch impacted US and other Western carriers, including Delta, United, American, Spirit, Alaska, Frontier, Hawaiian, Southwest, JetBlue, and Allegiant. Similarly, Asian and European airlines were also affected.
