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Windows 3.1 saves the day during CrowdStrike outage — Southwest Airlines scrapes by with archaic OS (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Southwest Airlines, the fourth largest airline in the US, is seemingly unaffected by the problematic CrowdStrike update that caused millions of computers to BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) because it used Windows 3.1. The CrowdStrike issue disrupted operations globally after a faulty update caused newer computers to freeze and stop working, with many prominent institutions, including airports and almost all US airlines, including United, Delta, and American Airlines, needing to stop flights.

Windows 3.1, launched in 1992, is likely not getting any updates. So, when CrowdStrike pushed the faulty update to all its customers, Southwest wasn’t affected (because it didn’t receive an update to begin with).

The airlines affected by the CrowdStrike update had to ground their fleets because many of their background systems refused to operate. These systems could include pilot and fleet scheduling, maintenance records, ticketing, etc. Thankfully, the lousy update did not affect aircraft systems, ensuring that everything airborne remained safe and were always in control of their pilots.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I love such things in Star Wars too.

And not sure whether there's been a plot play with the Katana fleet (all ships were slaved to the flagship, all crews including that of the flagship caught a virus causing them to go mad and die, and while they were still alive, the fleet jumped in unknown direction ; it was found later and ships reused by sides of the civil war) where its obsolete electronics and software were actually an advantage security-wise.

Though in that universe it seems that interfacing and integrating wildly different systems is more or less a normal thing, since there are lots of planets, lots of races and some things still in operation are few centuries old.