A widespread outage on Microsoft systems on Friday (July 19) is disrupting operations of flights, banks, media organizations and companies around the world.
The impact of the outage continued to escalate after the tech company said it was working on a fix for the issue affecting access to Microsoft 365 applications and services.
DownDetector, a website that tracks user reports of internet outages, recorded service disruptions at Visa, ADT security firm and Amazon, as well as airlines including American Airlines and Delta Airlines.
News agencies in Australia reported that airlines, telecommunications providers, banks and media broadcasters were experiencing disruptions after losing access to their computer systems. Some New Zealand banks also said their services were offline.
Microsoft 365 posted on Platform X that the company is “rerouting impacted traffic to alternate systems to more quickly mitigate the impact” and said they are “observing positive trends in service availability.”
Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment or further explain the cause of the outage.
Meanwhile, airlines and airports are reporting an increasing number of major disruptions.
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Allegiant Air were forced to ground flights.
British airlines, rail companies and television stations were also disrupted by computer problems. Low-cost airline Ryanair, rail operators TransPennine Express and Govia Thameslink Railway, and broadcaster Sky News were all affected.
Ryanair said: “We are experiencing disruption to our network due to a global third-party IT failure which is beyond our control. We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least three hours before their scheduled departure time.”
Australian airports reported widespread problems, with queues growing and some passengers stranded as online check-in services and self-service kiosks were disabled. Passengers in Melbourne queued for more than an hour to check in.
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol said on its website that the outage had a “significant impact” on flights to and from the busy European hub.
According to Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Berlin Airport in Germany said on Friday morning that “check-in will be delayed due to a technical failure,” and flights were suspended until 10 a.m., but no details were provided.
At Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport, some flights to the United States were delayed, while others were not affected.
Hong Kong International Airport said the Microsoft outage affected several airlines so the airport had switched to manual check-in, but flight operations were not affected.
Singapore’s Changi Airport also said check-in was being processed manually.
Reports of outages in Australia included NAB, Commonwealth Bank and Bendigo Bank, as well as Virgin Australia and Qantas, and telecommunications and phone providers such as Telstra.
Australian news organizations, including the ABC and Sky News, were unable to broadcast on their TV and radio channels and reported Windows computers suddenly shutting down. Some news anchors live-streamed from computers displaying a “blue screen of death” in front of darkened offices.
Shoppers were unable to pay at some supermarkets and stores due to a payment system failure.
ASB and Kiwibank in New Zealand said their services were disrupted.
A user of the social media platform X posted a screenshot of an alert from Crowdstrike saying the company was aware of reports of “Windows host crashes” related to its Falcon Sensor platform. The alert was posted on the password-protected Crowdstrike website and could not be verified. Crowdstrike did not respond to a request for comment.