Last week, much of the digital world went offline and shut down due to an update that caused Microsoft’s Windows operating system to crash and blue screen millions of devices. It affected places like hospitals, schools and airports. But one airline, unlike any other, was spared the chaos. And while many say it’s because it’s still using an ancient operating system, it’s not.
July 19, millions of computers and other Windows devices crashed and stopped working all over the world. It was later discovered that Crowdstrike, a major cybersecurity company, had released an update that was broken and broke everything for hours. And as is often the case on the internet these days, people started joking about it and making up stories, some of which went viral. For example, many people still believe that the Las Vegas Sphere crashed during the Crowdstrike event. (No, it didn’t..)
But perhaps the most viral statement was: reported by many media and shared online as true, was that Southwest Airlines in the United States had avoided the entire Crowdstrike mess because its systems were still running Windows 3.1. This is not true, although Southwest Airlines is indeed using older software that it probably should have upgraded.
As he noticed Operating system news, digging deeper into this story, we discover that many places quote the tweet that went viral claiming that Southwest is still using Windows 3.1. This person later confirmed that they were trollingbut that didn’t stop the claim from spreading. Later, people discovered article from 2023 comparing Southwest’s internal software to Windows 3.1, which suggests it’s almost as ancient. But that Never says that Southwest is Actually I’m still using Windows 3.1.
Dig a little deeper and… you can find an article from December 2022. With Dallas Morning News all about Southwest Airlines’ systems starting to crash around the holidays. The article, and others that followed, blamed the airline’s aging software, SkySolver and Crew Web Access, entirely. The article noted that the programs looked like they were designed in Windows 95.
Since then, people have been spreading the misconception that Southwest was using Windows 95, which was later confirmed by a popular tweet and other media outlets that spread the story.
But there’s no evidence that Southwest is still using Windows 3.1. Sure, the software they apply to schedule flights and manage employees looks ancient and has apparently been around since 2007. True, and scary. But no, Southwest didn’t avoid the Windows crash because it uses an operating system from 1992. And why did Southwest mostly avoid the chaos of July 19? Simple. Apparently they don’t apply Crowdstrike.
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