Mass IT outage hits airports, businesses and broadcasters around the world

Major airlines, medical facilities, businesses and police forces around the world are currently being affected by a massive information technology glitch caused by a problem with Microsoft cloud computing services early Friday.

CrowdStrike, the U.S. cybersecurity company behind the glitch that affects Microsoft Windows users, says that the outage “is not a security incident or cyberattack” and has now issued a solution.

But the error has brought chaos to a number of key institutions and businesses around the world that may take some time to clear up.

Flights have been grounded in several countries and stores and broadcasters in several countries went offline.

Major carriers, including American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, all issued ground stops Friday morning citing communications issues. Passengers traveling to the U.S. from as far away as Japan have had their flights cancelled. Delta has ordered a “global ground stop,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the House subcommittee on cybersecurity.

George Kurtz, president and CEO of CrowdStrike, said the problems could persist for some time yet.

“It could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover,” Kurtz told NBC’s “TODAY” show this morning.

Kurtz said the company was “deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this,” adding the issue has been fixed on their end.

“Many of the customers are rebooting the system, and it’s coming up, and it’ll be operational because we fixed it on our end,” he said. “We’re just trying to sort out where the negative interaction was,” he said of the faulty update that affected Windows PCs.

Earlier, in a post on X, Kurtz said that the outages were due to a “defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

In Europe, Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport said there would be delays to passenger check-ins “because of a technical fault,” and Aena, which manages 46 airports in Spain, said “an incident in the computer system” could cause delays. Several budget airlines in South Korea reported technical problems and delays, the Associated Press said. Sydney Airport, one of Australia’s largest, said there would be delays.

Paris’ airport authority said in a statement that while its systems were not affected ahead of next week’s Olympic Games opening ceremony, “this situation has an impact on the operations of airlines at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly airports: delays in check-in, delays and temporary suspension of some flights,” according to The Associated Press.

The Paris Olympics organizing committee told Reuters that while the outage was slowing its operations, its ticket sales remained unaffected. Elsewhere in the world of sports, British soccer team Manchester United delayed a ticket release scheduled for Friday, blaming problems with Microsoft.

That was just one of many businesses affected across the United Kingdom, with train operators blaming IT outages for cancellations Friday morning and the London Stock Exchange saying that a “3rd party global technical issue” for stopping its regulatory news service posting any new items.

The country’s National Health Service posted on X that “the NHS is aware of a global IT outage and an issue with a [general practitioner] appointment and patient record system.” The statement added that the health system’s emergency phone service was still operating.

In Israel, too, at least 15 major hospitals have been affected, according to local media. However, most medical centers have now either returned to normal operations or reverted to manual operations. The emergency line of the country’s ambulance service is also affected.

In an update on Facebook just before 2:20 a.m. (ET), Alaska State Troopers said that 911 and non-emergency phone numbers across the state were not working “due to a nationwide technology-related outage.”

Users of devices with Windows software reported seeing a blue screen when attempting to start their computers. The glitch appears to have caused havoc for supermarket self-service checkouts and countless websites.

Microsoft said the problem with its Azure Service and Microsoft 365 apps, including services such as the videoconferencing app Teams, was fixed early Friday, but companies across the U.S. and Europe were still reporting problems. The company said “a small subset of services is still experiencing residual impact.”CrowdStrike’s glitch has brought chaos to banking and retail businesses on at least three continents. Some national grocery store chains in the U.K. are only accepting cash, while banking customers in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have axperienced problems, with many being locked out of their accounts.

The glitch has affected news outlets, too, including NBC News. Sky News, NBC News’ British partner broadcaster, was temporarily unable to air live news.

“Sky News have not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, currently telling viewers that we apologise for the interruption. Much of our news report is still available online, and we are working hard to restore all services,” Sky News Executive Chairman David Rhodes said on X.

Broadcasters in Australia also reported problems. The country’s national cyber security coordinator, Michelle McGuinness, said on X that the issue did not appear to be the result of a cyber attack.