Major airlines, medical facilities, businesses and police forces around the world are currently feeling the effects of a major information technology outage that hit Microsoft’s cloud computing services early Friday morning.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said on Friday that the outage was the result of a failed routine software update and was “not a security incident or cyberattack.”
CrowdStrike, which provides cybersecurity services and software to many of the largest companies that use Microsoft systems, has released a new software update that automatically repairs some computers, but other machines must be manually rebooted to apply the patches, causing significant delays.
Microsoft said late Friday morning that its 365 apps and services had been restored, although some consumer customers may still be affected.
The glitch is causing disruption to many major institutions and businesses around the world and may take some time to resolve.
Many flights were grounded around the world and stores and broadcast stations in several countries were taken offline. The technical outage was responsible for more than half of the 1,352 U.S. flight delays and cancellations through 8 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, according to aviation technology company FlightAware.
Major airlines including American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines issued grounding orders on Friday morning, citing communications issues. Flights for passengers heading from Japan to the US were canceled. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Cybersecurity Subcommittee, said Delta had ordered a “global grounding.”
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CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz said the issues could continue for some time yet.
“It may be some time before some systems don’t recover automatically,” he said this morning on NBC’s “Today” show.
Kurtz said the company “deeply apologizes for the impact this has had on our customers, travelers and all those affected by this,” adding that the issue has been resolved by the company.
“Many customers have rebooted their systems and the issue is being resolved. We have fixed it on our side and the issue will be resolved,” he said. “We are still trying to figure out what went wrong” with the buggy update that affected Windows PCs, he said.
Previously, in X’s post, Kurtz said the outage was due to a “flaw found in a single content update on a Windows host.”
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In Europe, Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport said passengers would experience delays in checking in “due to technical issues,” while Aena Airlines, which manages 46 airports in Spain, said a “computer system failure” could cause delays. Several South Korean budget airlines reported technical issues and delays, according to the Associated Press. Sydney Airport, one of Australia’s largest, announced delays.
According to the Associated Press, Paris Airports Authority said in a statement that while airport systems were not affected ahead of next week’s Olympic opening ceremony, “the situation is affecting airline operations at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly airports, causing check-in delays and the delay or temporary cancellation of some flights.”
The Paris Olympics organizing committee told Reuters the outage was disrupting operations but would not affect ticket sales. In sports, English soccer team Manchester United postponed a ticket sale scheduled for Friday, citing the Microsoft problem.
It is just one of many businesses affected across the UK, with train operators blaming an IT outage for the cancellations on Friday morning and the London Stock Exchange saying its regulated news service was unable to post new stories due to a “global third-party technical issue”.
The country’s National Health Service told X, “The NHS is experiencing a global IT outage, [general practitioner] appointment and patient record systems,” it said in the statement. The health system’s emergency phone services remain operational.
At least 15 major hospitals in Israel have also been affected, local media reported, but most medical centres have now returned to normal operations or have reverted to manual working. The country’s emergency service’s emergency lines have also been affected.
At 2:20 a.m. ET, Alaska State Troopers announced that 911 and non-emergency phone numbers in the state were not working “due to technology-related outages nationwide and numerous websites.”
The outage has affected news organizations including NBC News, whose UK partner Sky News was temporarily unable to broadcast live, and Australian broadcasters have also reported issues.
Kevin Collier
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed.
