Global tech outage affects flights, banks, telecoms, media, healthcare

A global tech outage was disrupting operations across multiple industries on Friday, with airlines halting flights, some broadcasters off air and services from banking to healthcare hit by system problems.

While major U.S. airlines - American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines - grounded flights, other carriers and airports around the world reported delays and disruptions early on Friday.

Banks and financial services firms from Australia to India and Germany warned customers of disruptions.

In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, multiple reports from medical officials on X said. Sky News, one of the country's major news broadcasters, was off air, apologizing for being unable to transmit live, and soccer club Manchester United said on X that it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.

The former head of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre Ciaran Martin told BBC Radio that an update to a product offered by global cyberscurity firm CrowdStrike appeared to be affecting operating systems based on Microsoft's Windows Operating System.

Microsoft, CrowdStrike issue statements 

Microsoft's cloud unit Azure said it was aware of the issue that impacted virtual machines running Windows OS and the CrowdStrike Falcon agent getting stuck in a "restarting state," amid an ongoing global outage.

"We're aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

According to an alert sent by CrowdStrike to its clients, the company's "Falcon Sensor" software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the "Blue Screen of Death".

The alert, which was sent at 0530 GMT on Friday, also shared a manual workaround to rectify the issue. Over half of Fortune 500 companies used CrowdStrike software, the U.S. firm said in a promotional video this year.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz later released a statement isolating the problem. 

"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted," Kurtz wrote. "This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

"The world grinding to a halt because of a global IT meltdown shows the dark side to technology," AJ Bell investment analyst Dan Coatsworth said. "The severity of the problem boils down to how long it lasts. A few hours' disruption is unhelpful but not a catastrophe. Prolonged disruption is another matter," he added.

Widespread effects

The outages rippled far and wide. Airports in Singapore, India and elsewhere said the outage meant some airlines were having to check in passengers manually.

Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport said on its website that the outage was having a "major impact on flights" to and from the busy European hub. The outage came on one of the busiest days of the year for the airport, at the start of many people's summer vacations.

Spanish airline Iberia said it had been operating manually at airports until its electronic check-in counters and online check-ins were reactivated. It said there had been some delays but no flight cancellations. Air France-KLM said its operations were disrupted.

Hong Kong's Airport Authority said in a statement that the outage was affecting some airlines at the city's airport and they had switched to manual check-in.

In Germany, Berlin Airport said that "due to a technical fault, there will be delays in check-in" and that flights were temporarily suspended.

Zurich Airport, the busiest in Switzerland, suspended landings on Friday morning but said flights headed there that were already in the air were still allowed to land. It said that several airlines, handling agents and other companies at the airport were affected, and that check-in had to be done manually in some cases, but that the airport's own systems were running.

At Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport, some US-bound flights had posted delays, while others were unaffected.

Hospitals

Australia appeared to be severely affected by the issue. Outages reported on the site DownDetector included the banks NAB, Commonwealth and Bendigo, and the airlines Virgin Australia and Qantas, as well as internet and phone providers such as Telstra.

Hospitals in Britain and Germany also reported problems. Several practices within the National Health Service in England reported that the outage had hit their clinical computer system that contains medical records and is used for scheduling.

"We have no access to patient clinical records so are unable to book appointments or provide information," Church Lane Surgery in Brighouse in Northern England said on X. "This is a national problem and is being worked on as a high priority."

In northern Germany, the Schleswig-Holstein University Hospital, which has branches in Kiel and Luebeck, said it had canceled all elective surgery scheduled for Friday, but patient and emergency care were unaffected.

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News outlets in Australia — including ABC and Sky News — were unable to broadcast on their TV and radio channels, and reported sudden shutdowns of Windows-based computers. Some news anchors broadcast live online from dark offices, in front of computers showing "blue screens of death."

In South Africa, at least one major bank said it was experiencing "nationwide service disruptions" as customers reported they were unable to make payments using their bank cards at grocery stores and gas stations.

The New Zealand banks ASB and Kiwibank said their services were down.

While there were reports of companies gradually restoring their services, analysts weighed the potential of what one called the biggest ever outage in the industry and the broader economy.

"IT security tools are all designed to ensure that companies can continue to operate in the worst-case scenario of a data breach, so to be the root cause of a global IT outage is an unmitigated disaster," said Ajay Unni, CEO of StickmanCyber, one of Australia's largest cybersecurity services companies.

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