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

Major airlines, media organizations, businesses and police forces around the world were affected by a massive IT glitch caused by a problem with Microsoft cloud computing services early Friday.

Flights were grounded in several countries and stores and broadcasters in several countries were offline after the outage which appeared to be affecting Windows PCs.

Carriers including American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines all issued ground stops on Friday morning citing communication issues, less than an hour after Microsoft resolved the error, Reuters reported. Sydney Airport, one of Australia’s largest, said there would be delays.

In Europe, Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport said there would be delays to passenger check-in “because of a technical fault,” and Aena, which manages 46 airports in Spain, said “an incident in the computer system” could cause delays.

Train operators in the United Kingdom also blamed IT outages for cancellations Friday morning and the London Stock Exchange blamed a “3rd party global technical issue” for stopping its regulatory news service posting any new items.

In the U.S. Alaska State Troopers said in an update on Facebook just before 2.20 a.m. that 911 and non-emergency phone numbers across the state were not working, “due to a nationwide technology-related outage.”

Users reported seeing a blue screen when attempting to start their computers. The glitch appears to have caused havoc for supermarkets 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.”

The glitch has affected news outlets including NBC News. Sky News, NBC News’ British partner broadcaster, 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.

This is a developing story, check back here for updates soon.