A global tech outage has impacted companies across multiple industries including airports, trains, banks and TV broadcasters.
The IT issues have also affected businesses in countries such as UK, US, Australia and several European countries.
Overnight, IT giant Microsoft confirmed it was investigating an “issue” with its 365 apps and operating systems, and although it said it had recovered some services, warned that the issue was ongoing and users should expect “service degradation” according to a status page on its website.
Crowdsourced website Downdetector showed outages at several banks and telecoms companies.
The outage has been blamed by some experts on social media on an update to the CrowdStrike security software, causing an issue with Windows software.
Crowdstrike ran a recorded phone message on Friday when its technical support were contacted, saying it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to its Falcon sensor.
There was no information to suggest the outage was a cybersecurity incident.
Ryanair said its flights are being disrupted by the outage. The airline said in a statement: “We’re currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a global third party IT outage which is out of our control.
“We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least three hours before their scheduled departure time.”
The outages rippled far and wide, with Spain reporting a “computer incident” at all its airports, while Berlin airport temporarily halted all flights due to a “technical fault”. Lufthansa said its profile and booking retrieval functionality may be limited and that it was working on a solution.
In the Netherlands, Schiphol airport said it was affected and advised travelers flying today to contact their airlines.
London Stansted Airport said that some airline check-in services are being done manually as a result of the IT outage, but “flights are still operating as normal”.
In the US, 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.
Sky News, one of Britain’s major television news channels, was off-air on Friday, while various airlines and other services were also impacted by a global tech outage.
“Sky News have not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, currently telling viewers that we apologise for the interruption,” the broadcaster’s executive chairman David Rhodes said on X.
A health booking system used by doctors in England is also offline, medical officials said on X on Friday.
Australia’s largest bank, Commonwealth Bank said some customers had been unable to transfer money due to the service outage. National airline Qantas and Sydney airport said planes were delayed but still flying.
In the Victoria region, state police said some internal systems had been hit by the outage but emergency services were operating normally. The output of a number of media companies was also disrupted.
A spokesperson for New Zealand’s parliament said its computer systems had also been affected.
State broadcaster ABC said it was experiencing a “major network outage”, without giving a reason.
Several stock exchanges have also reported some impacts. One London-based trader said several multilateral trading facilities were being affected by the outage, leaving some clients unable to trade. “We are having the mother of all global market outages,” the trader added.
More to follow