Global technology outage disrupts major airlines, 911 services and businesses

A major cyber outage has grounded flights and disrupted businesses and media organizations throughout the world.

The technology glitch caused chaos on Friday morning with Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines issuing statements saying that their flight operations had been impacted. Emergency response systems were down at police agencies and healthcare providers in Phoenix, Arizona, forcing some police and ambulance providers to dispatch cars manually, per The Arizona Republic.

Banks and financial services firms from Australia to India and Germany warned customers of disruptions.

In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, multiple reports from medical officials on X said, while Sky News, one of the country’s major news broadcasters was off air, apologizing for being unable to transmit live, and soccer club Manchester United said on X that it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.

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The technology glitch was caused by a faulty update from CrowdStrike, a U.S. cybersecurity technology company based in Texas, in a single content update for Windows hosts.

It resulted in Windows computers and tablets crashing and displaying a blue screen, known informally as the “Blue Screen of Death.” Over half of Fortune 500 companies use CrowdStrike software, the firm said in a promotional video this year.

“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” George Kurtz, the president and CEO of CrowdStrike posted on X. “We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.”

“Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack.”

Delta Air Lines issued a statement early Friday morning announcing that all flights were paused as they worked through the technology issue. Allegiant Air grounded flights also.

United says it is now resuming some flights, but customers can expect schedule disruptions to continue throughout Friday. The airline has issued a waiver to make it easier for customers to change their travel plans via United.com or the United app, a spokesperson said. 

American Airlines says it has been able to “safely re-establish our operation.”

An American Airlines Boeing 737 Max takes off from Miami International Airport on Dec. 29, 2020 in Miami, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images / Getty Images)

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The FAA said all flights, regardless of destination, have been affected.   

Airports in Singapore, Hong Kong and India said the outage meant some airlines were having to check in passengers manually.

Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of Europe’s busiest, said it was affected, while airline Iberia said it had been operating manually at airports until its electronic check-in counters and online check-ins were reactivated. It said there had been some delays but no flight cancelations.

London Gatwick was also experiencing issues, while Air France-KLM said its operations were also disrupted.

Airport employee Derek Bangura speaks to anxious travelers at Berlin Airport during an IT outage on July 19, 2024, in Schoenefeld, Germany. Businesses, travel companies and Microsoft users across the globe were among those affected by a tech outage t (Sean Gallup/Getty Images / Getty Images)

The technology error was separate from a problem Microsoft faced overnight with cloud services, including Microsoft 365 apps such as Teams video conferencing. 

Microsoft said via X they were “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

Microsoft says service went down for some customers in the central United States around 6 p.m. ET, “including failures with service management operations and connectivity or availability of services.”  

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In this photo illustration, a television screen displays a Sky News announcement of an interruption to its broadcast due to an IT outage on July 19, 2024, in London, United Kingdom.  (Jack Taylor/Getty Images / Getty Images)

They also stated on their services health status page and X that they are “continuing to see an improvement in service availability across multiple Microsoft 365 apps and services. We’re closely monitoring our telemetry data to ensure this upward trend continues as our mitigation actions continue to progress.”

Officials have not said how long it will take to resolve the stop, but an update is expected later Friday morning.

Reuters contributed to this report.