Global Tech Outage Disrupts Multiple Industries

A significant global tech outage on Friday disrupted operations across various industries, grounding flights, affecting broadcasters, and impacting banking and healthcare systems. The widespread issue caused delays and operational halts, with multiple companies struggling to restore their services.

Airlines Ground Flights Amid Communication Problems

Major airlines, including American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Air, were forced to ground flights due to communication problems. United Airlines announced that a third-party software outage affected its computer systems worldwide, causing all aircraft to be held at their departure airports. Flights already in the air continued to their destinations. The disruption came shortly after Microsoft resolved a cloud services outage that had impacted several low-cost carriers, although it was unclear if the two incidents were related.

Broadcasters, Banks, and Healthcare Hit by Outages

The outages extended beyond aviation, severely affecting other sectors. In Australia, media, banks, and telecom companies experienced disruptions linked to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. Crowdstrike’s “Falcon Sensor” software was reported to cause crashes on Microsoft Windows systems, displaying the notorious “Blue Screen of Death.” The Australian government stated that there was no evidence suggesting the outages were the result of a cybersecurity incident.

The travel industry was notably impacted, with airports in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Spain reporting system problems and delays. Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned of issues with its booking systems and other disruptions. In the UK, booking systems used by doctors were offline, and Sky News was unable to broadcast live.

Financial institutions from Australia to India and South Africa alerted clients to service disruptions, and the London Stock Exchange Group reported an outage of its data and news platform Workspace. Amazon’s AWS cloud service acknowledged connectivity issues with Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces, adding to the widespread chaos.

As companies worked to resolve the issues, the full extent of the impact and the underlying causes remained under investigation. The global scale of the outage highlighted the interconnected nature of modern digital infrastructure and the cascading effects of technological disruptions across various sectors.