From FedEx to flight delays, Nebraskans feel impact of CrowdStrike outage

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — A major information technology outage on Friday morning caused worldwide flight delays and disrupted computer systems.

The outage happened after a faulty software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

A defect was found in the software update for Microsoft Windows, which disrupted computers across the globe.

The CEO of CrowdStrike, George Kurtz, said the company is actively working with customers impacted by the outage.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our company,” he said on NBC’s “Today Show.”

Multiple people posted on social media, saying their deliveries from FedEx have been delayed because of the outage.

It also hit the Lincoln Police Department.

“Our computers here in house are being slowly rebooted, getting back online,” spokeswoman Erika Thomas said. “We’ll be able to get work accomplished, just in a different way, and be able to pivot when everything else is back online.”

Major airlines including United, Delta and American grounded flights and had long delays.

One family was headed back to Nebraska from Florida when their flight was delayed, and later canceled.

“They told us they didn’t know when everything would come back online,” Nicole Dukesherer said. “If we wanted to get another flight, we couldn’t even book that because they didn’t have the systems up. We tried looking at other airlines, but tickets were about $850 a piece, and there’s six of us.”

So they decided to keep their rental car and drive the 22 hours back to Omaha.

“Everyone was still kind of standing in line wondering what to do,” Dukesherer said. “We saw a lot of pilots and flight attendants leaving, so we kind of figured at that point, we weren’t going anywhere.”