Flights cancelled in Nova Scotia as organizations deal with global tech outage | CBC News

A global tech outage is leading to cancelled flights, delays, and payment processing issues in Nova Scotia and around the world.

The Halifax International Airport Authority said Friday morning there are disruptions to multiple airlines, including Porter Airlines in Canada, and several different airlines in the United States.

But the Halifax airport said its online flight status board, which had been experiencing issues, is now up and running again. Passengers, however, are still being urged to check the status of their flight with their airline directly. 

Many flights are still on as scheduled, but the departures board for the Halifax airport is currently showing some cancellations for Porter, Delta and United flights.

The airport said it will provide more updates on its website and social media as they become available.

Meanwhile, in a message posted to its website, Porter Airlines said it is cancelling all flights until 1 p.m. due to the technology issues.

The company said that third-party outages are causing issues on all areas of its website, and that passengers will be unable to rebook while these systems are offline.

“The rebooking process will take a period of time, with new flights confirmed over a number of days due to high passenger volume,” the company wrote.

Further cancellations and delays are possible, said Porter. 

Halifax Transit app not accepting some payments

The Halifax Regional Municipality said it’s experiencing issues with the HFXGO transit app. Saved payment cards are not working, but Apple Pay, Google Pay, and unsaved cards will still go through.

Halifax Regional Police, Halifax Fire and Emergency, and the RCMP in Nova Scotia all said their services remain up and running. 

The technology issues are being caused by an update by global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, Reuters reported Friday.

The company’s Falcon Sensor software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” company CEO George Kurtz said in a message posted on social media. “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.”

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality said in an email Friday morning that it has not been affected by the IT issues.

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