Leading aircraft charter specialist Air Charter Service said the private aircraft charter market saw a more than 10% spike in business on Friday as people turned to alternative means of travel in the wake of the CrowdStrike-related IT outage that caused thousands of airline flight cancellations.
“Figures from flight data analysis specialist WingX show more than a 10% increase in private flights from Europe and the U.S. on Friday, compared to the same day last year, which is significantly ahead of the year-on-year figures for July so far,” said Air Charter Service director Joe Gallimore. “We had a real surge of activity on Friday, with bookings even still coming in on Sunday.
“Our U.S. offices in particular were extremely busy, with our Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Washington offices all booking multiple flights for clients that either didn’t want to miss out on their holidays or had to be at an all-important meeting that day.”
Cybersecurity software company CrowdStrike on July 19 deployed a faulty update to vulnerability-protection software for Microsoft Windows operating systems. This caused widespread disruptions, resulting in millions of Windows OS-based devices crashing and displaying the "blue screen of death." It affected airline operations, healthcare systems, 911 calling frameworks, and more.