Planes grounded as mass worldwide IT outage hits airlines, media and banks

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Planes grounded as mass worldwide IT outage hits airlines, media and banks

9:29 CAT | 19 Jul 2024

Image: BBC

The boss of the cybersecurity firm responsible for worldwide IT outages admits it could be “some time” before all systems are back up and running

While the software bug has been fixed, experts say the manual reboot of each affected Microsoft computer will take a huge amount of work

Thousands of flights have been cancelled, with banking, healthcare and payment systems all affected

In the UK, GPs have been struggling to access records, pharmacies have been hit and TV channels knocked off air

Flights running smoothly overall – Heathrow Airport updateOverall flights at Heathrow Airport are departing and arriving “smoothly”, a spokesperson says.

The statement adds: “It has been a busy, as expected day, but colleagues are delivering a stable operation.

“Colleagues are working hard to get passengers on their way with additional colleagues are on hand in the terminals to answer any questions passengers may have.”

Crowdstrike customers ‘remain fully protected’, chief executive says

Crowdstrike’s chief executive George Kurtz said the company’s customers “remain fully protected” despite the ongoing IT outage.

“Today was not a security or cyber incident. Our customers remain fully protected,” he said in a post on X.

“We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on,” he added.

Earlier, he said a fix had been issued but that it could be “some time” before all systems are back up and running.

More than 3,300 flights cancelled worldwideAround 3,340 flights have been cancelled worldwide, or about 3% of all scheduled services, according to aviation data company Cirium.

This is the total number of cancellations, meaning some may not be due to the IT outage.

Mercedes F1 team battle with IT outage – in Crowdstrike T-shirts

Mercb.b

The team behind Formula One drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell appeared to have encountered the same PC issues that airlines and banking services have been experiencing this morning – at least according to an image doing the rounds on social media.

It shows Mercedes team members in t-shirts emblazoned with Crowdstrike’s logo, whilst apparently contending with the same blue screen of death their update has wrought on many PCs.

Formula One drivers have been taking to the Hungaroring racetrack near Budapest for their first practice ahead of Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

Here’s the latest

As queues stacked up at airports, TV channels went off-air and medical appointments were postponed, anti-virus firm Crowdstrike quickly became a household name when it confirmed a bug in its software was to blame for IT issues on Microsoft devices across the world.

Here’s where things stand:

Crowdstrike says it has fixed the erroneous update, but it could be “some time” before systems are back up and running

Our cyber correspondent Joe Tidy explains here why it could take days to fix – Microsoft has suggested switching devices on and off again up to 15 times

More than 1,300 flights have been cancelled and many others delayed

Sky News spent most of the morning off-air as broadcasters also faced issues, with Australia’s ABC unable to function properly for six hours

In the UK, trains, payment in shops, pharmacies and GP surgeries have been hit – supermarket Morrisons says its earlier problems have been fixed

Crowdstrike boss George Kurtz says he’s “deeply sorry” for the disruption

After huge disruption, there are signs that some companies and services are beginning to get back up and running. We’re currently looking into the state of play in key areas and will bring you more on that when we have it.#

Analysis> Is Musk right – is this the biggest IT fail ever?

Tesla and X boss Elon Musk earlier branded today’s outage as the “biggest IT fail ever” – but is he right?

In terms of immediate impact on people, it’s hard to think of a worse one. No other incident has affected such a broad swathe of industry and society.

The most recent mega outage was when Meta, the company that owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, fell over in 2021. That affected billions of social media users as well as millions of businesses.

But this Crowdstrike outage is on another level. The closest case we’ve had is all the way back in 2017 when two deliberate cyberattacks took hundreds of thousands of computers offline, and had a massive impact on NHS services.

But again, this incident has potentially affected many more computers and businesses around the world. The true test to see if Musk is right will be how quickly it takes for normality to return, and how much the clean-up will cost.

Microsoft suggests switching it off and on again… 15 times

Microsoft has suggested a fix on its website, external – and it’s a solution many office workers will be familiar with: “Have you tried switching it off and on again?”

That’s what Microsoft says has worked for some users of virtual machines – PCs where the computer is not in the same place as the screen.

Microsoft says: “Several reboots (as many as 15 have been reported) may be required, but overall feedback is that reboots are an effective troubleshooting step at this stage.”

It has also suggested deleting a certain file – the same solution some Crowdstrike employees have been giving on social media.

London taxi drivers struggling to take card payments

Taxisl.b
London cabbies have been struggling to take card payments, with taxi driver Tony Vieira saying his customers have been forced to pay in cash.

It could be a “disastrous day” if the problem persists, he says, with added trips to cash points proving costly.

Another taxi driver, Tommy Johnson, says he hasn’t been able to log on to his IT system all day, adding that around 95% of his payments are normally with card.

He’s been lucky with many customers having cash, but adds: “I have had to turn a few people away”.

How a single IT update caused global havoc – in 100 words

Bluesc.b.b

It’s now been several hours since a single IT update from a US anti-virus company unleashed global havoc.

You may never have heard of the anti-virus firm Crowdstrike before, but something the company did to its virus scanner Falcon had a very adverse effect on computers running Windows software – in their millions.

Blue Screen of Death was reported worldwide.

Microsoft was quick to say it was a “third-party issue” – in other words, not its fault. Apple and Linux users, unaffected, rejoiced.

It’s a poignant reminder of how reliant the world has become on devices managed remotely by huge companies, and how powerless it leaves us when they fail.

It could take some time for systems to recover – Crowdstrike boss

Sticking with NBC’s interview with Crowdstrike’s George Kurtz, the cybersecurity boss repeats that the issue was caused by a bug in their update that hit Microsoft operating systems.

“We know what the issue is … and have resolved the issue,” he says.

How long will it take to get everything back up and running for users?

“It could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover, but it is our mission… to make sure every customer is fully recovered,” he says.

We’re deeply sorry – Crowdstrike boss

The boss of cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike apologises for the disruption caused by its software update in an interview with US broadcaster NBC News.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies,” George Kurtz says.

We’ll bring you more on this shortly.

Signs some services may be back up and running

The website Downdetector tracks which sites maybe having tech issues – as you can see from the picture below, there was a large spike in reports of problems this morning in the UK:

Downdet.b — *An image on DOwn Detecter showing the status of Microsoft, Visa, Ladbrokes, Sainsbuey’s, Tesco, Microsoft 365, Lloyd’s Bank, XBox and Ancestary.com*

But the drop-off from that spike shows that very few people are now reporting issues with many services – of course, that’s just a snapshot of some of the companies which seem to be affected.

But numbers now seem to be falling from their peaks a couple of hours ago.

Downdetector relies on people self-reporting problems, so it could just be that people aren’t sending in as many reports.

But the general trend seems to be that services are starting to get back up and running, though the real-world fallout of this will continue for days or even weeks.

UK government business unaffected, No 10 says after Cobra meeting

Top UK officials met for an emergency Cobra meeting a little earlier, as No 10 says it isn’t aware of the outage affecting government business.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer didn’t chair the Cobra meeting, as he was holding cabinet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at Downing Street.

A No 10 spokeswoman says ministers are being regularly updated on the outage, and government is “working closely with the respective sectors and industries on this issue”.

Even airlines not affected by IT outage are experiencing delays

I’m at Gatwick Airport in London, waiting to board a flight to Sicily.

There are loads of delays, so even though our airline says their systems are not affected by the IT outage it seems like we might be here for a while.

Lots of the people I’m meeting are coming from other places – and we’re all sharing photos of the queues at our airports in our group chat and playing bingo to see who is stranded closest to where we’re going.

Microsoft says ‘underlying cause’ has been fixed

Microsoft says the “underlying cause” of the mass IT outage has been fixed for its apps, but “residual impact” is continuing to affect some services.

The company previously said the issue was due to “an update from a third-party software platform” – which has now been confirmed as Crowdstrike.

‘Biggest IT fail ever’ says Musk

We’ve just brought you two posts from our experts on the nature and scale of the worldwide IT outage.

But on X, Tesla and X boss Elon Musk has tried to sum it up more succinctly.

“Biggest IT fail ever,” he says.

Musksxt.b

IT problems will take ‘days’ to fix

Cyber-security experts are warning that, although there is now a software fix, it’s going to take a huge amount of work to get computers back up and running.

Crowdstrike’s bad software causes systems to “blue screen” and crash, which means they can’t restart to get the good update on to computers.

Researcher Kevin Beaumont says: “As systems no longer start, impacted systems will need to be started in ‘Safe Mode’, to remove the faulty update.

“This is incredibly time-consuming and will take organisations days to do at scale. Essentially we have one of the world’s highest impact IT incidents caused by a cyber-security vendor.”

What is the Blue Screen of Death?

Bluesc.b — *Blue screen / error screen on cash registers in a store in Australia [Photo: Reuters]*

Blue screens at checkouts in Sydney, Australia

PC users will know there are a whole host of error messages that can cause panic and frustration.

But those of us who have been met with Windows’ so-called blue screen of death (BSoD) before will feel the pain of those people worldwide seeing it appear today.

It’s what pops up when there is a critical error affecting the operation of your PC – in this case accompanied by an unending loop of trying and failing to restart and launch properly.

A BSoD can be prompted by hardware or software issues, but as Joe Tidy said in an earlier post, it’s not the easiest thing to resolve – and can be less easy when dealing with fiddly software bugs.

Even though Crowdstrike says it has identified and fixed the erroneous update bricking Windows devices – those with devices caught in the loop will still need to take their own actions.

Turkish Airlines cancels 84 flights

Turki.b — *FILE – Turkish Airlines is one of the world’s biggest [File photo: EPA]*

Turkish Airlines, Turkey’s flag carrier, has confirmed it is affected by the massive global IT outage on Friday.

A spokesperson tells the BBC that as of 13:00 local time (11:00 BST), 84 of its flights to and from Istanbul, and various locations across Europe, have been cancelled.

Turkish Airline’s low-cost carrier, AJet, also says it is experiencing disruptions to online ticketing, reservations, and call centres.

Turkish Airlines apologised for the inconvenience and says flights will “gradually return to normal”.

Delta flights remain paused

Further to those cancellation numbers, here’s a new statement from Delta Airlines – the world’s second biggest by passenger numbers.

“All Delta flights are paused as we work through a vendor technology issue.

“Any customers whose flights are impacted will be notified by Delta via the Fly Delta app and text message.

“Customers should use the Fly Delta app for updates. We apologize for the inconvenience as our teams work through this issue. Reports indicated that other airlines may also be impacted.”

Almost 1,400 flights cancelled worldwide

There were around 110,000 commercial flights scheduled across the world today – as of 11:00 BST, 1,390 have been cancelled, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.

Here’s a national breakdown – we hope to have up-to-date UK figures soon:

US: 512 flights cancelled so far

Germany: 92

India: 56

Italy: 45

In Canada: 21

Bilbao.b — *Bilbao airport in Spain earlier today*

Analysis: IT security systems can have ‘god-like’ access

It might seem extreme that a piece of cyber-security software can cause such a huge amount of damage – but these products are, by their nature, deeply ingrained in the innards of a computer network.

They have “god-like” access to all the inner workings of an IT system for obvious reasons.

These “End Point Protection” programmes have to be able to monitor the inner workings of computers to search for abnormalities that might be malicious software, or hackers poking around inside databases.

Washington DC Metro up and running

Earlier, the Metro service in the US capital, Washington DC, told users to expect delays because of the IT problems.

It now says, external “all Metrorail stations opened on time and service is running as scheduled”.

Budapest.b — *The scene at Budapest airport earlier today[Photo: Angus Walker]*

What’s the latest?
,

A major IT problem is disrupting transport, healthcare, businesses, and other sectors across the world

Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike blames an issues with one of its updates for Windows – it says the problem has been “identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed”

Crowdstrike’s shares are down by more than 20% in unofficial trading in the US – equal to a $16bn loss in value

Worldwide, more than 1,000 flights have been cancelled – but American Airlines says flights are resuming again

In the UK, NHS England says most GP practices are affected – but there is no known impact on emergency services

There are also some delays on the trains – but one operator says it is “not disastrous”

American Airlines back up and running

American Airlines says it has been able to “safely re-establish” its operation following a “technical issue with a vendor”.

The US airline says its systems were back up and running by 05:00 ET (10:00 BST).

“We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience,” it adds.

As a reminder, the airline – along with many others – stopped flights taking off earlier today, as the IT chaos swept across the world.

The biggest IT problem since at least 2017

For my money, we’ve not seen as bad an IT issue since the WannaCry cyber-attack in May 2017.

That was a malicious cyber-attack that affected an old version of Windows and spread automatically and uncontrollably to any computer that had that old and unprotected Windows software.

It affected an estimated 300,000 computers in 150 different countries. Famously the NHS was badly hit with huge disruption for days.

In that case, it was an attack that got out of hand. Today’s outage was caused by a defect found in a Crowdstrike cyber-security software update.

Analysis: A $16bn problem for Crowdstrike

Crowdstrike has lost a fifth of its value in pre-market trading in the US – down 21% in unofficial trading.

If confirmed when US stock markets open later today, that is a loss of $16 billion in its overnight valuation.

Industry insiders say the problem is centred on the fact that cloud security companies have very high level privileges to update the core systems of their customers.

When this works, it helps protect their systems. When an attempted update fails, it brings down the systems they are supposed to protect, all at once.

While the fix is in theory, simple – updating systems physically from backup disks – in practice this is now more difficult in a cloud computing world.

Governments face serious questions about how resilient our economic infrastructure is to this sort of epic failure.

Does it make sense to allow significant concentration on one company or product?

Crowdstrike says global IT issues caused by ‘defect’ in ‘content update’

Here’s the full statement from the company:

“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. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.

“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.

“We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.

“We further recommend organisations ensure they’re communicating with Crowdstrike representatives through official channels.

“Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of Crowdstrike customers.”

Microsoft blames ‘third-party software’

Here’s a new update from Microsoft:

“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 says.

This may not be easy to fix

It appears that the so-called “Blue Screen of Death” that computers are suffering means that each one needs to get “hands on keyboards treatment”.

That is, it appears to be not something that can be fixed with a central command from an IT administrator in a firm’s HQ. They will need to go and reboot each and every computer affected.

If it is indeed a Crowdstrike issue that could be a monumental task. Crowdstrike reported having nearly 24,000 customers in its last earnings.

Each customer is a large organisation, so the number of individual end points could be enormous.

Analysis: What is Crowdstrike?

We don’t yet know what is causing the IT outage affecting companies around the world.

But earlier today American Airlines blamed a “technical issue with Crowdstrike” – and now the Swiss cyber security office is pointing the finger, too (see previous post).

Crowdstrike is a cybersecurity company founded in 2011 with the aim of safeguarding the world’s biggest companies and hardware from cyber threats and vulnerabilities.

It specialises in endpoint security protection and tries to prevent malicious software or files from hitting corporate networks from devices that connect to them, such as phones and laptops.

It also aims to protect the data of companies which have shifted from guarding it under their own roof, or on their own servers, to so-called cloud providers.

The Texas-based firm was co-founded by entrepreneurs George Kurtz, who remains chief executive, and Dmitri Alperovitch. It listed its shares publicly on the tech heavy Nasdaq stock exchange in 2019.

Since it first launched, the company has seemingly played a key role in helping firms investigate cyber-attacks.

In 2016 Crowdstrike was called in by the US Democratic National Committee, the strategy arm of the Democrat Party, to investigate a breach into its computer network.

Swiss cyber security office blames Crowdstrike

A faulty update or misconfiguration by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is behind the worldwide IT outage, the Swiss Federal Office for Cyber Security tells Reuters news agency.

More than 1,000 flights cancelled globally so far

Canc.b

More than 1,000 flights have been cancelled around the world today so far, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

This figure – currently 1,078 – will only get bigger as the knock-on impacts grow.

The firm also says today was set to be the busiest day for UK flight departures so far this year, with more than 3,200 departures scheduled – the highest number of daily departures since October 2019.

NHS has ‘long-standing measures in place’

Following from that breaking line, here’s the full statement from NHS England.

“The NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with EMIS, an appointment and patient record system, which is causing disruption in the majority of GP practices.

“The NHS has long-standing measures in place to manage the disruption, including using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions, and the usual phone systems to contact your GP.

“There is currently no known impact on 999 or emergency services, so people should use these services as they usually would.

“Patients should attend appointments unless told otherwise. Only contact your GP if it’s urgent, and otherwise please use 111 online or call 111.”

Majority of GP practices affected – NHS England

NHS England says the global power outage is affecting most GP practices – but there is currently no known impact on emergency services.

Morrisons says payment problems ‘resolved’The UK supermarket earlier said it had problems in some stores – but now says they’re “resolved”.
Mallorca airport hit by three-hour queues

Mall.b — *Jemma, who is on maternity leave, is travelling with her six-month-old baby daughter Elin*

A family from Bristol is stuck at Palma de Mallorca Airport after the IT outage caused delays at check-in desks.

Jemma Wheeler, 30, says her family of five has been standing in the same queue for three hours.

“We only came for a five-night short break,” she tells the BBC. “We thought it was a quick, two-hour flight and we would be back in no time to enjoy the nice weather at home.”

A forlorn wait at Luton airport

I’m sitting somewhat forlornly at London Luton airport, where my Wizz Air flight to Vilnius was supposed to depart at 08:00 this morning.

As we waited to board, news of the global IT outage rippled across the phones of passengers in the queue. And it soon became apparent that our travel plans would be disrupted.

Airpp.b

A check-in staffer later confirmed all IT systems were down, and the flight would be wouldn’t be taking off for a while. He said the airline was working towards manual check-ins.

As for how long that would take, a shrug said it all.

Trains still running in the UK – but multiple operators hit

In the UK, trains are still running, with one major operator saying it is “not disastrous”.

But there are delays and cancellations reported across the network – National Rail says the following operators are affected:

Avanti West Coast, c2c, Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Great Western Railway, Hull Trains, London Northwestern Railway, Lumo, Merseyrail, Northern, Southern, Thameslink, Transport for Wales, TransPennine Express, and West Midlands Railway

British betting firm Ladbrokes reports problems

Ladbrokes says: “You might have seen the news about the global technical issue affecting airlines, banks etc.

“Unfortunately we’re experiencing this too. We’re working hard to resolve the issue but don’t know when it will be fixed.

“Thanks for being so patient and apologies for the inconvenience.”

Pharmacy services disrupted

A spokesperson for the UK’s National Pharmacy Association says: “We’re aware that due to global IT outages that services in community pharmacies, including the accessing of prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries, are disrupted today.

“We urge patients to be patient whilst visiting their pharmacy.”

In the UK, Morrisons having payment problems

Morrisons says it is having “some issues” with payment in some of their shops, and it is working hard to resolve it.

Sky News is back on air

Sky News is now back on air, after struggling to broadcast this morning.

CBBC seems to be the only major channel still experiencing problems.

Flight handling impossible, says KLM

Further to that airline roundup – in the past half hour, Dutch airline KLM says flight handling is currently “impossible”., external

KLM has “largely” had to suspend operations, but it is “working hard to resolve the problem”.

“We realise that this is very inconvenient for our customers and staff, particularly in the midst of the summer holiday season,” it says.

More airlines and airports affected across Europe

Barajasm.b — *Queues at Barajas airport, Madrid*

Both German airline Lufthansa and SAS Airline, based in Scandinavia, are the latest airlines to report disruption.

Lufthansa says that, at the moment, the company’s booking retrieval may be limited, but a solution is being worked on.

And SAS says its services are fully operational, but “technical issues” are impacting its booking engine.

Two hospitals in Germany cancel non-emergency operations

Two hospitals in the northern German cities of Luebeck and Kiel have cancelled elective operations scheduled for Friday.

Patient care and emergency services will go ahead as normal, the University Clinic of Schleswig-Holstein adds.

Paris Olympics IT systems affected

The organising committee for the Paris Olympics says its IT operations have also been impacted.

But – with just a week to go before the Games begin – the committee says it has contingency plans, according to Reuters news agency.

What is the latest?

A major problem with computer systems is disrupting transport, broadcasters, hospitals and other sectors across the world

Flights have been grounded and airports worldwide are reporting delays

American Airlines says Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity company, is the source of the tech issues

In the US state of Alaska, police warn the 911 system may be unavailable

In Poland, the Baltic Hub terminal asks ships not to send their containers there

In the UK, rail companies are “experiencing widespread IT issues” and warning of delays

Some GP practices are struggling to access their records systems, which include online bookings

On TV, Sky News and CBBC have been off air

Delhi airport goes manual

Del.b

In Delhi, there was very little information available when I arrived at the airport. No electronic terminals were available for check-in and the lines to speak with an agent were long and unwieldy.

We were given blank boarding cards and asked to fill in the information manually. Baggage tags were printed blank and were also entered manually.

After going through security, there is one person at Terminal 3 who is in charge of updating a whiteboard by hand with gate information.

I’m at the gate where the flight is meant to leave from but there are no agents nor is there a plane.

At the gate across from the one I’m at, there is a captain and crew waiting for grounds crew to start the boarding process.

Because everything here is being done manually, things are slow. But this airport remains open.

United Airlines blames ‘third party software’ for grounding flights

Here’s a statement to the BBC from United Airlines, which is the world’s fifth biggest by passenger numbers.

“A third party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide, including at United.

“While we work to restore those systems, we are holding all aircraft at their departure airports. Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations.”

Barcodes not working at Gatwick

Here at Gatwick, barcodes are not working so security checks on boarding passes are being done manually, but security searches are operating normally.

I didn’t have baggage to check in, so no delays for me there. But I had to use cash to buy coffees at Starbucks in the airport departures lounge.

I am on an internal flight to Newquay and am on the plane now. It is all on time so far – due to take off at 9.20am.

But we are being warned that it might take time to take off because of backlogs with air traffic control.

Poland’s largest container terminal ‘struggling’

Poland’s largest container terminal, the Baltic Hub in the northern city of Gdansk, is the latest major infrastructure to be affected.

“Pleased be advised that we are struggling at the Baltic Hub with a global Microsoft operating system outage that is hampering terminal operations,” the company says.

Baltic Hub has asked companies not to send containers to the port. The hub began operating in 2007 and has the capacity to handle up to 2.9 million containers annually.

American Airlines blames Crowdstrike for outage

American Airlines, which is the world’s biggest by passenger numbers, tells BBC that no flights are being allowed to take off, and that it is in contact with all flights that are currently in the air.

It says the IT problems are because of a “technical issue with Crowdstrike that is impacting multiple carriers”.

The airline says its working with the IT security firm to fix the problem as quickly as possible. The airline carries an average of 578,000 passengers a day.

Problems reported with NHS GP system in England

There appears to be issues with booking appointments at some GP surgeries in England.

There are multiple reports in relation to EMIS Web – which allows GPs to manage appointment bookings, conduct patient consultations, and update, store and share patient records.

Grimethorpe Surgery in Barnsley posted on X, external reporting a “major issue” saying it has “no access” to the clinical system.

The clinic later posted saying: “We are aware that users are still unable to access EMIS Web.”

The Church Lane Surgery in Brighouse posted on X saying “our clinical system has not been working since 7am this morning”.

“We have no access to patient clinical records so are unable to book appointments or provide information.”

Central Lakes Medical Group in Ambleside wrote on X saying it has been “impacted by the IT outage”.

Solihull Healthcare Partnership in the West Midlands said there is a “national issue” with “EMIS Web”, the clinical computer system.

Reports name Crowdstrike as possible cause

There have been reports suggesting that a cybersecurity company called Crowdstrike, which produces antivirus software, issued a software update that has gone horribly wrong and is bricking Windows devices – prompting the so-called “blue screen of death” on PCs.

Now, whether these two issues are the same thing, or whether it’s a perfect storm of two big things happening simultaneously – I don’t yet know. It certainly sounds like it’s going to be causing a lot of havoc.

We’ve contacted Crowdstrike for response but haven’t heard back yet.

Outage hits airport and parliament in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Christchurch International Airport says it is experiencing IT issues across a number of systems which may affect flight arrivals and departures.

And a spokesperson for New Zealand’s parliament says their computer network is having problems.

Sky News back on air… briefly

A few moments ago Sky News resumed broadcasting after being forced off air.

But it’s now once again displaying a slate apologising “for the interruption to this broadcast”.

Airports in Japan and Tokyo also affected

Japan’s Narita airport, around 60km from Tokyo, says airlines JetStar, Jeju Air, Qantas, HK Express and Spring Japan are have issues with their systems.

And in India, Delhi airport says some services have been temporarily impacted.

Alaska State Troopers report 911 outage

Police in the US state of Alaska have reported, external an outage of emergency phone lines.

Posting on Facebook, the state police force says “many 911 and non-emergency call centres are not working correctly across the State of Alaska”.

Long queues at Stansted airport, but flights operating as normal

Meanwhile at London’s Stansted airport, some check-ins are being done manually but “flights are still operating as normal”.

“Our main operational systems are unaffected,” a spokesperson says, but “some retail payment machine services have been impacted”.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport also affected

Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport is the latest to report delays caused by the IT outage.

“The outage has an impact on flights flying from and to Schiphol,” a spokesperson says, adding it is not yet clear how many flights are affected.

London Stock Exchange operating as normal

The London Stock Exchange says it’s working as normal – but says there are problems with its RNS (regulatory news service).

“RNS news service is currently experiencing a third party global technical issue, preventing news from being published on www.londonstockexchange.com,” the statement says.

“Technical teams are working to restore the service. Other services across the group, including London Stock Exchange, continue to operate as normal.”

Mild chaos at Sydney Airport

It has been an hour of uncertainty and mild chaos here at Sydney Airport.

First departure board information screens went blank – with at least one airline, Jetstar, announcing it could not check passengers in.

Its apology on the public address system firmly blamed Microsoft.

About half an hour later Virgin Australia said there had been a “total ground stop” with “no flights going in or out”.

But things do seem to moving again. Virgin Australia has started boarding flights (including mine) and so it looks like the skies above, Australia’s biggest city will soon be filled with aircraft again.

Not everyone is thrilled. In perhaps stereotypical Australian fashion, I overheard one passenger say he was a bit disappointed not to be squeezing in a couple of extra Friday night airport beers.

US airlines issue global ground stop on all flights

United, Delta and American Airlines – which are all based in the United States – have issued a “global ground stop” on all of their flights.

Flights that are currently airborne will continue, but no further flights will take off for now.

Ryanair warns of ‘potential disruptions across network’

Further from that post from Edinburgh, European airline Ryanair says it’s experiencing “potential disruptions across the network” – which it says is due to a third party outage.

The airline is advising that anyone travelling today should check the Ryanair app for updates on their flight.

Departure boards freeze at Edinburgh airport

Here at Edinburgh airport there’s been disruption to services 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 – meaning some passengers have missed their flights. Earlier this morning the fire alarm in the main terminal building sounded, thought to be have been triggered by the same computer error. Edinburgh airport said it was working to resolve the issue.

Australia telecommunications giant affected

Australia’s Telstra Group, a telecommunications company, says it is also facing disruption.

Replying to a post on X, external, formerly Twitter, the company said “global issues affecting CrowdStrike and Microsoft are disrupting some of our systems. The issue is causing some holdups for some of our customers and we thank you for your patience.”