Global IT outage grounds flights, hits key media, banking sectors

Major US airlines ordered ground stops on Friday citing communications issues, while other carriers, media companies, banks and telecoms firms around the world also reported system outages were disrupting their operations, said media reports.

American Airlines, Delta, 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.

It was not immediately clear whether the call to keep flights from taking off were related to an earlier Microsoft cloud outage.

In Australia, media, banks and telecoms companies suffered outages, which the Government said appears to be linked to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, reported Reuters.

Crowdsourced website Downdetector showed outages at several banks and telecoms companies.

Crowdstrike ran a recorded phone message on Friday when Reuters contacted its technical support saying it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to its Falcon sensor, without mentioning Australia.

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.

The outages rippled far and wide, with Spain reporting a “computer incident” at all its airports, while Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions which it said would affect “all airlines operating across the Network,” though it did not specify the nature of the disruptions.

In UK, television channels, airports and banks have been knocked offline in a massive outage causing Windows computers to suddenly shut down, reported The Telegraph.

Sky News’s breakfast show was not on air on Friday morning, replaced by archive footage. 

Downdetector, a website which monitors outages, reported sudden spikes in problems with websites including Microsoft applications, banking websites and airline apps. 

Online, users reported problems as far as Australia, New Zealand, India and Japan, with the UK likely to be heavily impacted as during Friday’s rush hour. 

Troy Hunt, a cyber-security researcher, said in a post on X that “something super weird happening right now” with individuals around the world complaining their Windows computers were suddenly showing the “blue screen of death” and entering recovery mode. 

Cyber security engineers pointed to a problem with Crowdstrike, a piece of antivirus software, which appeared to be causing computers to crash. 

Senad Arun, founder of cyber research company Imperum, described the incident as “Crowdstrike Doom’s Day”. 

In a post on its website, Crowdstrike said: “Crowdstrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows related to the Falcon Sensor.”