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A mass IT outage is affecting flights, banks, and supermarkets around the world.American, United, and Delta have grounded all their flights.The London Stock Exchange also experienced disruptions.
Major airlines, banks, and supermarkets are experiencing widespread disruptions linked to an IT outage after Microsoft reported problems with its online services.
American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines issued ground stops for their aircrafts due to communication issues, Reuters reported.
Earlier on Thursday night, Frontier Airlines issued a similar ground stop order, saying in a statement: “flight operations are currently being impacted by a major Microsoft technical outage.”
A spokesperson for Singapore’s Changi Airport told BI: “Due to a global outage affecting IT systems of many organizations, the check-in process for some airlines at Changi Airport is being managed manually.
This included the “”issuance of boarding passes,” the spokesperson said.
The London Stock Exchange Group’s Workspace news and data platform was impacted too, affecting user access worldwide.
Microsoft acknowledged the issue in an X update on Friday morning, writing, “Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions.”
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.
CrowdStrike issues
Many of the affected Windows devices displayed an error message — colloquially called the “Blue Screen of Death” — that locks users out of their computers.
An update released by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is believed to have caused the issue. It’s unclear if the outage is directly related to Microsoft’s systems.
The Austin-headquartered tech giant, which specializes in security for cloud computing platforms, confirmed with CNBC on Friday morning that it was receiving outage reports.
“CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor,” CrowdStrike wrote in a message, per CNBC. The Falcon is one of the company’s landmark cybersecurity products.
A Reddit forum moderator from the company posted shortly after the outage, saying CrowdStrike was investigating the issue.
“We have widespread reports of BSODs on windows hosts, occurring on multiple sensor versions,” the post said.
CrowdStrike’s press team did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
