As airlines continue to grapple with the fallout from Friday's global IT outage, thousands of flights have been canceled or delayed. There were over 1,000 flights canceled and more than 2,300 delays as of 11 a.m. ET Sunday, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware. Delta and United Airlines have been hit the hardest with 539 and 254 cancellations so far, respectively. Endeavor Air, a wholly-owned regional subsidiary of Delta has also seen significant cancellations. According to the FAA, several U.S. carriers, including American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines, issued ground stops for all their flights early on Friday due to communication problems, which caused a domino effect into Sunday. The cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike blamed the global tech outage on a defect in an update for Microsoft Windows hosts. “Today was not a security or cyber incident. Our customers remain fully protected," Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz posted Friday on X.<br/>
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Air India said on Friday a plane sent to pick up passengers stranded in Russia has departed for San Francisco after the previous day's flight made an emergency landing there. An Air India airplane flying from Delhi to the West Coast city made an emergency landing in Russia after the crew detected a potential issue in the cargo hold area, its second such incident on the route in just over a year. In a statement, Air India said a team, including crew and security personnel, were on board the ferry flight and that it had set up a dedicated hotline for anyone wanting to reach out to passengers. Many carriers, including U.S. and European Union airlines, avoid Russian airspace following the war in Ukraine, but Air India uses that route, giving it a flying time and cost advantage on U.S.-bound flights. The Indian embassy in Russia said on social media platform X that a team of three senior officials and an interpreter have reached Krasnoyarsk airport to assist the passengers. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement that about one-third of the passengers are U.S. citizens, adding that it has been in contact with a number of passengers and their family members.<br/>
Despite a weak yen, Japanese carrier ANA has maintained the load factor on Thailand-Japan routes at the same robust level as 2019, with more of its passengers being Thai tourists as well as long-haul travellers transiting in Japan. Daishi Yoshihara, general manager of Thailand, said Thailand has been one of the airline's strongest routes in Asia-Pacific and Southeast Asia following the pandemic, along with Singapore and Shanghai. Yoshihara said the weak yen encouraged more Thais and other foreign tourists to visit Japan, but the situation doesn't favour Japan's outbound market as exchange rates were more costly for Japanese nationals. The airline is now operating three daily flights using Boeing 787 series aircraft between Bangkok and Tokyo's two airports -- Narita and Haneda -- compared with five daily flights prior to the pandemic. The share of Thai passengers and foreign passengers on these routes had risen to over 20% and 40%, respectively, higher than the levels recorded before the pandemic, while the portion of Japanese passengers had dropped. Many foreigners, such as those from the US, chose to transit in Japan when visiting Southeast Asia and Thailand. Yoshihara said the airline was still able to maintain a strong load factor at over 80-85%, which is equivalent to the level before the pandemic. Amid a weak yen and high fuel prices, he said the airline was able to manage the fuel expense, which is the major airline cost, through hedging contracts. Moreover, the trend of airfares is normalising, but they are still not as low as the level seen in 2019.<br/>