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Global tech outage grounds flights, hits banks and media businesses

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Global tech outage grounds flights, hits banks and media businesses

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., hundreds of flights were canceled Friday morning. 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.

Public transit systems in the U.S. reported impacts. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in Washington D.C. said its “website and some of our internal systems are currently down,” but that trains and buses were running as scheduled. In New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority also said it’s buses and trains were unaffected but that “some MTA customer information systems are temporarily offline due to a worldwide technical outage.”

Travel disruptions: Over 500 US flights canceled as global IT outage prompts ground stop

The outages appeared to be linked to an update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, which is used by over half of Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. firm said in a promotional video this year.

In a post on X, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the outage was not a “security incident or cyberattack.”

He said it was connected to a “defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.” He said the issue has been “identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

Microsoft said in a statement on X that “the underlying cause has been fixed,” however, residual impacts continue to affect “some Microsoft 365 apps and services. We’re conducting additional mitigations to provide relief.”

Developments:

∎ The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement on X that it’s “closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines” and that several airlines “have requested FAA assistance with ground stops until the issue is resolved.”

∎ Dubai International Airport said on X that it is operating normally following “a global system outage that affected the check-in process for some airlines.” It added that the affected airlines “promptly switched to an alternate system, allowing normal check-in operations to resume swiftly.”

∎ German University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, one of the largest medical facilities in Europe said in a statement on its website that it’s halting all elective procedures on Friday and closing its outpatient clinics. Emergency care remains guaranteed, the statement, which cited the Crowdstrike-related outage, said.

Air passengers around the world faced delays, cancellations and problems checking in as airports and airlines were caught up in a massive IT outage that also affected industries ranging from banks to media companies.

Several U.S. carriers, including American Airlines, United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines, issued ground stops for all their flights early on Friday due to communication problems, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

There were over 500 flights canceled and more than 1,100 delays as of 6 a.m. ET, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Read more about the outage’s travel impacts

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. The soccer club Manchester United said on X that it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.

In Australia, media, banks and telecoms companies suffered outages.

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.

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.

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.

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

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