Global tech outage disrupts airlines, banks, and media

A global technology outage on Friday disrupted operations in various industries. Airlines halted flights, some broadcasters went off-air, and sectors ranging from banking to healthcare faced system problems.

The UK's largest rail franchise reported "widespread IT issues" affecting its four train lines, leading to potential cancellations. Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) stated, "We are currently experiencing widespread IT issues across our entire network," on X.

"We are unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-notice cancellations," GTR added, noting that customer information platforms were also affected.

The affected rail networks—Southern, Gatwick Express, Thameslink, and Great Northern—serve areas across London, east and south England, and London Gatwick Airport.

GTR mentioned its IT teams were "actively investigating to determine the root cause of the problem," which affected Friday morning commuter services.

Other transport systems across the UK experienced similar IT issues, with Ryanair reporting disruption due to "a global third-party IT outage."

British airports, including London Luton and Edinburgh, warned passengers of longer waiting times due to the glitch. Sky News television was temporarily off air.

In this photo illustration a television screen displays a Sky News announcement of an interruption to this broadcast as the channel is off air due to a tech outage. (Photo: Getty Images)

Reports indicated that National Health Service (NHS) computer systems for general practitioners were also affected.

American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Air grounded flights citing communication problems. This followed Microsoft's resolution of a cloud services outage affecting several low-cost carriers, though it was unclear if the issues were related.

"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," United stated. "Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations."

Australia's government noted that outages affecting media, banks, and telecoms companies appeared linked to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.

An alert from Crowdstrike, reviewed by Reuters, indicated that the company's “Falcon Sensor” software was causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known as the “Blue Screen of Death”. The alert, sent at 0530 GMT (0630 BST) on Thursday, included a manual workaround to fix the issue.

A Crowdstrike spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness's office stated there was no indication the outage was a cyber security incident, in a post on X.

The outages had widespread effects. The travel industry was notably impacted, with airports around the world, including Tokyo, Amsterdam, Berlin, and several Spanish airports, reporting system problems and delays.

International airlines, including Ryanair, warned of booking system issues and other disruptions.

In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, according to multiple reports from medical officials on X. Sky News, a major UK broadcaster, went off air, apologising for being unable to transmit live.

Banks and financial institutions from Australia to India and South Africa informed clients about service disruptions. LSEG Group reported an outage of its data and news platform Workspace.

Amazon's AWS cloud service provider stated it was "investigating reports of connectivity issues to Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS."

It was not immediately clear whether all reported outages were linked to Crowdstrike problems or if there were other issues involved.

(With inputs from AFP and Reuters)