IT outages have been reported across the globe as airlines, airports, banks and media companies have suddenly experienced ongoing disruptions that have upended the daily lives of potentially millions of people.
Microsoft users, including airlines, reported widespread outages late Thursday into the early Friday morning hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing an issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.
The cause, exact nature and scale of the outage was unclear, according to ABC News.
Flights Grounded
At least three major U.S. airlines — American Airlines, United and Delta — have asked the FAA for global ground stop on all flights, according to an alert from the FAA on Friday morning.
The FAA is telling air traffic controllers to tell airborne pilots that airlines are currently experiencing communication issues.
Meanwhile, flights in the air will stay in the air, but no American, United or Delta flights will take off.
“We’re aware of a technical issue with CrowdStrike that is impacting multiple carriers. American is working with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience,” American Airlines said in a statement obtained by ABC News.
“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. Flights already airborne are continuing to their destinations,” United said in a statement.
It is unclear how widespread the issue is but Melbourne Airport in Australia has also said they are “experiencing a global technology issue” which is impacting their check-in procedures.
So far Friday, there are more than 12,500 flights delayed and 679 cancellations worldwide, according to FlightAware.
Global Outages
Global IT outages have also been reported in many countries across the world including Berlin Airport in Germany, the London Stock Exchange, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom.
“We’re investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services,” Microsoft said in a statement released on social media Friday morning.
At 3:55 a.m. ET, Miscrosoft said multiple services are continuing to see improvements.
Crowdstrike, the U.S. cybersecurity company, has admitted to being responsible for the error and are working to correct it.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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