A Windows version from 1992 is saving Southwest’s butt right now

Jacob Roach · Digital Trends ·

5 min read Original article ↗
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Stephen Miller / Southwest Airlines

Nearly every flight in the U.S. is grounded right now following a CrowdStrike system update error that’s affecting everything from travel to mobile ordering at Starbucks — but not Southwest Airlines flights. Southwest is still flying high, unaffected by the outage that’s plaguing the world today, and that’s apparently because it’s using Windows 3.1.

Yes, Windows 3.1 — an operating system that is 32 years old. Southwest, along with UPS and FedEx, haven’t had any issues with the CrowdStrike outage. In responses to CNN, Delta, American, Spirit, Frontier, United, and Allegiant all said they were having issues, but Southwest told the outlet that its operations are going off without a hitch.

Delta, United, American Airlines flights are all grounded right now.

The reason Southwest is not affected is because they still run on Windows 3.1.https://t.co/ezFubvKVNA

— Artem Russakovskii (@ArtemR) July 19, 2024

Some are attributing that to Windows 3.1. Major portions of Southwest’s systems are reportedly built on Windows 95 and Windows 3.1, which is something the company has come under fire for in the past several years. It should go without saying that Southwest needs to update its system, but in this case, the ancient operating system seems to be doing the airline some favors to avoid a complete Y2K-level apocalypse.

If you aren’t flying Southwest, you’re out of luck right now. Airports around the world had their scheduling systems crash in the wake of the CrowdStrike update, sending millions of travelers into a frenzy. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it’s working with several airlines on the outage. Thankfully, the FAA itself hasn’t been affected.

Sydney Airport flight displays have all BSOD'd. #microsoft #crowdstrike pic.twitter.com/ZL9QwGdi1a

— techAU (@techAU) July 19, 2024

Microsoft, who has been at the center of this fiasco with CrowdStrike, says that the root cause of the issue has been fixed. It could take days before everything is sorted out, though. Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella commented on the issue on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.”

That shows the scale of this problem. Microsoft has outages all the time, but none of them are worth commenting on from the CEO of the company. This is a different beast entirely, affecting millions of servers running on Windows. Southwest seems to have saved itself from any trouble by being woefully late to upgrade.

Jacob Roach

Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…

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