CrowdStrike IT outage hits global supply chain, with air freight facing days or weeks to recover

The CrowdStrike software bug that crashed Microsoft operating systems and caused the largest IT outage in history caused disruptions at U.S. and global ports, with highly complex air freight systems suffering the heaviest hit, according to logistics experts, as global airlines grounded flights.

"Planes and cargo are not where they are supposed to be and it will take days or even weeks to fully resolve," Niall van de Wouw, chief air freight officer at supply chain consulting firm Xeneta, said in a statement shared with CNBC. "This is a reminder of how vulnerable our ocean and air supply chains are to IT failure." 

Thousands of flights were grounded or delayed at the world's largest air freight hubs in Europe, Asia and North America.

The new issue for the global supply chain comes amid a rise in global demand, with shipments up 13% year over year in June. Air freight supply has increased, but only by 3% year-on-year, already causing higher costs for shippers due to the limited capacity, according to Xeneta. "Shippers already had concerns about air freight capacity due to huge increases in demand in 2024, driven largely by the extraordinary growth in e-commerce goods being exported from China to Europe and the U.S.," Van de Wouw said. "Available capacity in the market is already limited so airlines are going to struggle to move cargo tomorrow that should have been moved today.

Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, told CNBC on Friday morning that what the government is watching for over the course of the day, as the issue has been identified, is "the kind of ripple or cascade effects as they get everything back in their networks back to normal."

"These systems, these flights, they run so tightly, so back to back that