Global tech outage grounds flights, hits banks and media businesses

Posted by Admin July 19, 2024 Tech

American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Air grounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft said it resolved its cloud services outage.

LONDON − Major airlines, media companies, banks and telecoms firms around the world reported systems outages Friday that were disrupting their operations.

In the U.S., American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines were among those who grounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft said it resolved a cloud-services-related outage that impacted several low-cost carriers.

It was not immediately clear whether the call to keep flights from taking off was related to the Microsoft cloud outage. The Washington state-based tech giant did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.

Outages ripple far and wide

From the United Kingdom to Singapore, the effects of tech outages were far-reaching on Friday.

British broadcaster Sky News went off-air and train companies in the U.K. reported long delays. Departure boards at several U.K. airports appeared to freeze, according to passengers who posted reports on social media.

London’s Stock Exchange reported experiencing disruptions. Some hospitals also reported difficulties processing appointments and several chain retail stores said they couldn’t take payments.

In Australia, media, banks and telecoms companies suffered outages, which the government said appeared to be linked to an issue at cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. Crowdstrike did not did not immediately return a comment request. However, it played a recorded phone message when the Reuters news agency contacted its technical support saying it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to a sensor.

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.

Spanish authorities reported a “computer incident” at all its airports.

Berlin’s main airport said check-ins were delayed because of a “technical fault.”

Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions which it said would affect “all airlines operating across the Network.” It did not specify the nature of the disruptions.

There were reports a shipping terminal in Gdansk on Poland’s Baltic coast was not operating normally.

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority said some of its systems were offline due to a worldwide technical outage. It said MTA train and bus services were unaffected.

NetBlocks, a digital-connectivity watchdog, said that the outage reported by global airlines, corporates and infrastructure services firms and others was having “minimal” impact on global Internet connectivity.

Contributing: Reuters