Earlier it was reported that the American airline Southwest Airlines avoided Crowdstrike failure thanks to Windows 3.1. According to the source of the message, «it was trolling» — there is no such data in fact.
One of the most viral messages about Crowdstrike was about avoiding Southwest Airlines due to the use of an outdated OS. This was reported by numerous publications in the United States and around the world. In fact, this information is incorrect — Southwest Airlines does use some outdated software, but there is no information about Windows 3.1.
OS News’ research into the story revealed that the sites cited a viral tweet as a source that Southwest was still using Windows 3.1. The author later explained that it was trolling.
To be clear, I was trolling last night, but it turned out to be true. Some Southwest systems apparently do run Windows 3.1. lol.https://t.co/qWPei3ID1G pic.twitter.com/NmcXeW6qPl
— Artem Russakovskii (@ArtemR) July 19, 2024
«To be clear, I was trolling last night, but it turned out to be true. Some southwestern systems are apparently running Windows 3.1. lol».
The author of the message refers to article 2023, in which Southwest’s internal software is compared to Windows 3.1, implying that it is almost as old. What it doesn’t say is that Southwest is actually still using Windows 3.1.
The Dallas Morning News article from December 2022 tells that Southwest Airlines systems began to «melt» during the Christmas holidays. This article and other related stories blame this on the airline’s outdated software — SkySolver and Crew Web Access. The article mentions that these programs look like they were designed for Windows 95. The article was followed by rumors that Southwest was using Windows 95, viral tweets, and media outlets spreading the story.
However, there is no evidence that Southwest is using Windows 3.1. Yes, its flight planning and employee management software is quite old and has been around since about 2007. However, Southwest doesn’t seem to have avoided the Crowdstrike outage because of Windows 3.1. Why did it happen? ABC News reportsThe company simply does not use Crowdstrike software.
On Friday, July 19, as is the case in times of emergency, people believed in more unbelievable things. For example, in the meme that a large sphere in Las Vegas showed blue screen of Windows, or crashed during Crowdstrike. This did not actually happen.
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