Global IT Outage Hits Airlines, Microsoft, Media, Huge List of Firms

A global IT outage on Friday disrupted flights, banking services, TV broadcasts and other services in multiple countries.

The outage was linked initially to Microsoft and a faulty update to the anti-virus programme CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that services many industries.

The “Blue Screen of Death” — a crash in Microsoft Windows — was being caused by CrowdStrike’s “Falcon Sensor” software, according to an alert emailed to clients. At 0530 GMT on Friday, the alert was delivered along with a manual remedy to fix the problem, Reuters said.

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It led to major US airlines ordering all their planes to be grounded because of communications issues, plus major impacts on media outlets, banks, retail firms and telecom companies around the world.

American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines and Allegiant Air grounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft said it resolved its cloud services outage that impacted several low-cost carriers.

Flights were disrupted at airports around the globe such as Sydney, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Berlin and many across Spain, which reported system failures and delays disrupting weekend and business travel.

While LSEG Group’s Workspace data and news platform was down, clients of banks and other financial institutions in South Africa, India and Australia were alerted to potential service delays.

Customers in Australia were unable to access bank accounts via the Internet, plus Facebook and Netflix, while retailers such as Woolworths and 7-Eleven also reported problems.

The Australian government convened a meeting of emergency authorities at 6pm local time, under the umbrella of the National Emergency Management Agency because of widespread impacts from the outage.

Australian media outlets, banks and telecoms companies suffered outages, which the government said appeared to be linked to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.

CrowdStrike ran a recorded phone message on Friday saying it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to its Falcon Sensor. The company’s stock dropped 20% in Friday’s pre-US-market trade.

There was no information to suggest the outage was a cyber-security incident, the office of Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.

Airlines, trains, health services hit in UK, Europe

The outages rippled far and wide, with impacts across the United States, Britain, Europe, India and in New Zealand.

Microsoft said the problem started late on Thursday night – about 11pm British time (6pm in New York, 6am Singapore) – and affected many systems for customers in the central United States, according to a New York Times report.

Microsoft 365 said they are investigating an issue affecting users’ ability to access apps and services.

“Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions,” they said on X. “We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the issue.”

Spain reported a “computer incident” at all its airports, while Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions that it said would affect “all airlines operating across the network,” though it did not specify the nature of the problems.

Wales Online said train operator TransPennine Express (TPE) warned passengers it has been affected by the outage, saying: “Please be aware that some TPE stations and systems are having IT issues. Please purchase tickets on board if you are unable to do so in stations.”

It also reported that services had been disrupted at Edinburgh Airport “as the computer error caused departure screens to malfunction. Departure boards in the main terminal building appeared to freeze, showing out-of-date information about gate numbers and take off times – the glitch also set off fire alarms.”

There were also impacts on Britain’s National Health Service, plus TV stations such as Sky News, which was unable to put shows on air.

The broadcaster put a statement on their online page, YouTube and TV channel saying: “We apologise for the interruption to this broadcast. We hope to restore the transmission of Sky News shortly.”

AWS cloud service provider said in a statement it was “investigating reports of connectivity issues to Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS.”

AWS said later its services and network connectivity “were also not affected by this event and continued to operate normally.”

It was not immediately clear whether all reported outages were linked to CrowdStrike’s problem or if there were other issues at play.