Last week, a large part of the digital world shut down and stopped functioning due to an update that caused Microsoft’s Windows operating system to crash and cause blue screens on millions of devices. Places like hospitals, schools, and airports were affected. However, unlike others, one airline was spared the disruption. Many say it’s because the airline is still using an old operating system, but that’s not true.
On July 19, millions of computers Windows devices around the world started crashing or stopped working. Then it turned out that major cybersecurity company Crowdstrike released an update that didn’t work and caused everything to stop working for hours. And as is often the case on the internet these days, people started making jokes and stories about it, some of which went viral. For example, many people still believe that the Sphere in Las Vegas crashed during a Crowdstrike event.It wasn’t.
But perhaps the most talked about Multiple media outlets reported And the truth shared online was that Southwest Airlines in the US managed to avoid all of the chaos caused by Crowdstrike because their systems still run on Windows 3.1. This isn’t accurate, but Southwest Airlines is certainly using older software that needs to be upgraded.
As pointed out OSNews, If you dig into this story, you’ll see that it cites a tweet that went viral in many places. Southwest Airlines claims to still be using Windows 3.1This person later They were vandalizingBut that didn’t stop the allegations from spreading. 2023 Articles If you compare Southwest Airlines’ in-house software to Windows 3.1, you’ll see that it’s almost as old. I never have Southwest is actually I’m still using Windows 3.1.
Digging a little deeper You can find articles from December 2022 from Dallas Morning News Around the same time, Southwest Airlines’ systems began to melt down over the holidays, and this article and subsequent articles blamed the airline’s aging software, SkySolver and Crew Web Access, which the article noted appeared to have been designed for Windows 95.
Since then, the false idea that Southwest Airlines was using Windows 95 has spread, with the tweet then going viral and some media outlets reporting the story, confirming the idea.
But there seems to be no evidence that Southwest is actually still using Windows 3.1. It’s true, and it’s scary. But Southwest was able to avoid a Windows crash not because they’re using an operating system from 1992. Why did Southwest largely avoid the chaos of July 19th? It’s simple. They reportedly do not use Crowdstrike.
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