AIRLINES and holiday firms will NOT have to pay compensation for flights axed amid the global IT meltdown, a watchdog says.
Travel operators can argue the outage — which left passengers sleeping on airport floors — was down to “extraordinary circumstances” beyond their control, the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority has decreed.
It wrote to airlines to say the tech meltdown falls under the same category as terrorism or sabotage, for which operators are not responsible.
It means stranded passengers will not get the standard compensation of between £211 and £506 they are entitled to under EU regulations.
But they can still claim expenses for hotel, food and travel costs and be refunded for flights.
Paul Charles, boss of travel consultancy PC Agency, said: “If the regulator can’t protect passengers and agree com-pensation for ruined holidays, what is it for?”
Hundreds of Brits stranded in Morocco on Friday and Saturday night finally flew home yesterday.
But huge queues still built up at Heathrow as more flights were cancelled.
The IT crisis, involving 8.5million computers globally, was caused by a flawed update.
And the British Medical Association says GP services also affected “cannot be resumed immediately”.
IN a statement, the IT firm said:
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.
Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This was not a cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
We are referring customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous public updates on our blog.
We further recommend organisations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.
Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers.
We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption.
We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on.
We assure our customers that CrowdStrike is operating normally and this issue does not affect our Falcon platform systems.
If your systems are operating normally, there is no impact to their protection if the Falcon sensor is installed.
We will continue to provide updates to our community and the industry as they become available.
Trains
Airports and airlines
Television Networks
Britain’s GPs
Global hospitals
Supermarkets and restaurants
Events
Banks and supermarkets in Australia including Beyond Bank Australia have also been experiencing issues this morning.
Various Microsoft services in Japan and New Zealand are also battling tech issues.
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