A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted flights, hospitals, banks, media outlets and other companies around the world today, triggering chaos for millions of businesses and institutions reliant on the widely used software.
Major US carriers American Airlines, United and Delta grounded all flights as hospitals and banks also reported systems outages amid what appears to be a global tech outage that affected Windows PCs.
Customers travelling with the carriers said on social media their pilots had told them all systems were down and that all aircraft must remain grounded until they are brought back online.
Many complained they had been left stranded in planes sitting on the tarmac before take-off or after landing at their destination – though the FAA’s website showed American Airlines cancelled its ground stop this morning.
Social media was also awash with reports from medical staff that electronic medical record (EMR) systems had crashed, taking hospitals nationwide offline.
And images shared to social media from around the world showed self-checkout tills, ATM machines, television channels and a host of other tech displaying error messages.
The website DownDetector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, also recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon.
American Airlines planes stand at a LaGuardia Airport terminal
Customers travelling with the carriers said on social media their pilots had told them systems were down and that all aircraft must remain grounded until they are brought back online
American Airlines flights parked at gates after flights were delayed nationwide
In a notice titled ‘Service Degradation’, Microsoft said users ‘may be unable to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services’
Some of the outages appear linked to US IT company CrowdStrike and an update related to its ‘Falcon sensor’ – an agent that is designed to analyze internet connections to prevent viruses and other malicious software.
Several reports suggested the update caused a crash for computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
Windows is the most used operating system in the world, meaning the outage is affecting almost every part of the global economy.
American Airlines told the BBC that it had experienced a ‘technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple carriers’.
‘CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows… related to the Falcon sensor,’ a prerecorded message says on the company’s helplines.
It was not immediately clear whether all reported outages were linked to CrowdStrike problems or there were other issues at play.
‘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 said in a statement.
‘Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations.’
The airline later updated customers to say that operations had been restored as of 5AM ET, writing on X, formerly Twitter: ‘Earlier this morning, a technical issue with a vendor impacted multiple carriers, including American.
‘As of 5:00 a.m. ET, we have been able to safely re-establish our operation. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.’
However, in a post shared at 6:27AM on the Delta News Hub account, the airline said that it had paused its entire ‘global flight schedule’ and was still working to try and ‘resume operations as quickly as possible’.
‘Delta has paused its global flight schedule this morning due to a vendor technology issue that is impacting several airlines and businesses around the world,’ the statement, which was posted on X, read. ‘We are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible to resume operations.’
Microsoft said this morning it was taking ‘mitigation actions’ after service disruptions.
‘Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions,’ the company said in a post on social media platform X.
In a notice titled ‘Service Degradation’, Microsoft said users ‘may be unable to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services’.
Microsoft said this morning it was taking ‘mitigation actions’ after service disruptions that impacted airlines, TV stations, and stores across the globe
Some of the outages appear linked to US IT company CrowdStrike and an update related to its ‘Falcon sensor’ – an agent that is designed to analyze internet connections to prevent viruses
‘We remain committed in treating this event with the highest priority and urgency while we continue to address the lingering impact for the remaining Microsoft 365 apps that are in a degraded state,’ it said.
Major banks, businesses, newsrooms and television networks have been affected by the service issues.
‘We have activated our contingency plans and deployed additional staff to our terminals,’ a statement from Sydney Airport reads.
‘If you’re travelling today make sure you leave plenty of time to come to the airport and check with your airline regarding the status of your flight.’
And it was not just the US that was impacted by the outages. Australia’s big three airlines – Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin – have also been hit by the issues.
Meanwhile, Australian and British broadcasters SBS, Network 10, the ABC and Sky News Australia and Sky News UK were all taken off air.
In the UK this morning viewers were left with a static message from Sky on their TVs apologizing for the ‘disruption’ to the service at 6am when broadcasting was meant to begin.
It read: ‘We apologize for the interruption to this broadcast. We hope to restore the transmission of Sky News shortly.’
The Australian National Cyber Security Coordinator issued a statement insisting the outage does not appear to be a hack.
‘I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon,’ the account posted on X.
Travelers at airports across the US were told that their flights had been grounded as a result of the Microsoft issue
One Delta customer reported that there were ‘long lines backing up’ as staff attempted to reset their systems after the ‘blue screen of death’ appeared on all kiosk screens
One ABC reporter posted on X a photo of his computer down
Microsoft users around the world have taken to social media to express their confusion at their computers shutting down
‘Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies.
‘There is no information to suggest it is a cyber security incident. We continue to engage across key stakeholders.’
These outages come just days after the operations of several low-cost carriers, including Frontier, were affected on Wednesday and into Thursday due to a Microsoft cloud outage.
Microsoft said on Thursday it was investigating issues with its cloud services in the Central U.S. region, which had caused the grounding and cancellation of several flights.
Carriers Frontier, Allegiant and SunCountry reported outages that affected operations.
While Frontier said a ‘major Microsoft technical outage’ had hit its operations temporarily, SunCountry said a third-party vendor affected its booking and check-in facilities, without naming the company.
‘The Allegiant website is currently unavailable due to the Microsoft Azure issue,’ Nevada-based Allegiant said in a statement to CNN. Allegiant did not immediately respond to Reuters request for a comment.
Frontier cancelled 147 flights on Thursday and delayed 212 others, according to data tracker FlightAware. 45% of Allegiant aircrafts were delayed, while Sun Country delayed 23% flights, the data showed.
Passengers at Gatwick Airport as a massive Microsoft outage caused chaos in the aviation sector
Major banks, businesses, newsrooms and television networks in the US, UK, and Australia have been affected by the service issues
Australian and British broadcasters SBS, Network 10, the ABC and Sky News Australia and Sky News UK were all taken off air
Cyber crisis strikes Australia at Woolworths as ‘massive queues’ form as Microsoft suffers massive international outage
Companies in the US and across the globe have been affected by the outage
The companies did not give details on the number of flights impacted.
Microsoft said its outage started at about 6 pm ET on Thursday, with a subset of its customers experiencing issues with multiple Azure services in the Central US region.
Azure is a cloud computing platform that provides services for building, deploying, and managing applications and services.
Separately, Microsoft said it was investigating an issue impacting various Microsoft 365 apps and services.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a Reuters request seeking further details on the outage
Other operators that were affected included Allegiant and SunCountry.
Microsoft said that its Azure cloud software had suffered a temporary failure which triggered a breakdown in ‘service management operations and connectivity or availability of services’ across the central US region.
However, the outage did not impact American Airlines, it said earlier in a statement to Reuters, suggesting that carrier had suffered a separate issue.
