A global IT outage has caused significant disruptions in Danish airports, especially in Copenhagen and Billund. On Friday, 12 departures from Copenhagen Airport were canceled due to IT problems, mainly originating from airports abroad. According to Copenhagen Airport, most of the cancellations were directly related to challenges with IT systems in foreign airports. In Billund, the country’s second-largest airport, four departures were canceled during Friday, as confirmed by Billund Airport. Both airports also experienced more significant delays than usual for a summer day.
“The average delays were higher than normal, which can largely be attributed to IT challenges in other airports,” Copenhagen Airport stated in a written statement. However, the airport did not specify how much the delays had increased. In Billund, the waiting time for delayed passengers varied from half an hour to up to an hour and three quarters, according to the airport.
Neither Copenhagen Airport nor Billund Airport were directly affected by the outage itself. The problem arose due to a faulty update of an antivirus program from the American company CrowdStrike. The program is used by many companies and organizations worldwide.
The global IT failure illustrates how dependent modern airports are on functioning technological systems and how errors in critical software updates can have far-reaching consequences.