A worldwide technology outage on Friday caused flights to be grounded, banks to go offline, and media outlets to be taken off air, leading to a massive disruption that impacted companies and services globally and underscored the reliance on software from a handful of providers.
The glitch appeared to be related to issues at global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and Microsoft. The issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and services, and escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing it. Microsoft said later on Friday the issue had been fixed.
Airports and airlines around the globe have warned of delays and cancellations or switched to manual check-in, with some halting flights. Telecommunications providers, banks, and media broadcasters were disrupted as they lost access to computer systems.
Later on Friday, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized for the tech failure, vowing to work with all of its customers as they work to get their operations back online.
"We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this, including our company," he told NBC News' "Today" program.
"Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it's coming up and it'll be operational," Kurtz said. "It could be some time for some systems that won't automatically recover," he added, but the company "would make sure every customer is fully recovered."
CrowdStrike earlier deployed a fix and said the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack. The company said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows.
'Mother' of all outages
But hours after the problem was first detected, the disarray continued – and escalated.
Long lines formed at airports in the U.S., Europe and Asia as airlines lost access to check-in and booking services at a time when many travelers are heading away on summer vacations.
News outlets in Australia and the Untied Kingdom – where telecommunications were severely affected – were pushed off air for hours. Hospitals and doctor's offices had problems with their appointment systems, while banks in South Africa and New Zealand reported outages to their payment system or websites and apps.
Early on Friday, major U.S. airlines – American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines – grounded flights, while other carriers and airports around the world reported delays and disruptions.
Banks and financial services companies from Australia to India and Germany warned customers of disruptions and traders across markets spoke of problems with executing transactions.
"We are having the mother of all global market outages," one trader said.
Airlines in the U.K., Europe and India also reported problems and some New Zealand banks said they were offline.
"This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world's core internet infrastructure," said Ciaran Martin, a professor at Oxford University's Blavatnik School of Government and former Head of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre.
DownDectector, which tracks user-reported disruptions to internet services, recorded that airlines, payment platforms and online shopping websites across the world were affected – although the disruption appeared piecemeal and was apparently related to whether the companies used Microsoft cloud-based services.
Cyber expert James Bore said real harm would be caused by the outage because systems we've come to rely on at critical times are not going to be available. Hospitals, for example, will struggle to sort out appointments and those who need care may not get it.
"There are going to be deaths because of this. It's inevitable,'' Bore said. "We've got so many systems tied up with this."
Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was "working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact" and that they were "observing a positive trend in service availability."
CrowdStrike said in an emailed statement that the company was "actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts."
The Austin, Texas-based company's Nasdaq-traded shares were down nearly 15% in premarket trading early Friday.
A recording playing on its customer service line said, "CrowdStrike is aware of the reports of crashes on Microsoft ports related to the Falcon sensor," referring to one of its products used to block online attacks.
Meanwhile, governments, officials and companies across the world scrambled to respond.
New Zealand's acting Prime Minister David Seymour said on X that officials in the country were "moving at pace to understand the potential impacts," adding that he had no information indicating it was a cybersecurity threat.
The issue was causing "inconvenience" for the public and businesses, he added.
On the Milan stock exchange, the FTSE MIB index of blue chip Italian stocks could not be compiled for an hour, though trading continued.
Major delays reported at airports grew on Friday morning, with most attributing the problems in booking systems of individual airlines.
In the U.S., the FAA said the airlines United, American, Delta and Allegiant had all been grounded.
Airlines and railways in the U.K. were also affected, with longer than usual waiting times.
Turkish Airlines cancels 84 flights
In Germany, Berlin-Brandenburg Airport halted flights for several hours due to difficulties in checking in passengers, while landings at Zurich airport were suspended and flights in Hungary, Italy and Türkiye disrupted.
Turkish Airlines, Türkiye's national flag carrier, announced on Friday that it had canceled 84 flights due to the technical glitch.
"In order to avoid any disruption, some flights will be canceled, and our flights will gradually return to normal as soon as possible," Yahya Üstun of Turkish Airlines announced on social media platform X.
Most of the Turkish flagship carrier's canceled flights were domestic and to and from Europe.
"We are working to reduce our operational intensity to solve the software-related problem that affects many companies from different sectors around the world," Üstun said.
"We are currently experiencing problems with ticketing, check-in, and reservation processes," the carrier said in a separate statement.
Flights will gradually return to normal as soon as possible, it noted.
The government expects domestic system disruptions to end "within a few hours," Turkish Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu told reporters in the western province of Tekirdağ, rejecting any "cyberattack" claims.
Türkiye's Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) also said in a statement the disruption was not caused by a cyberattack.
"The disruption occurred in institutions and organizations using the CrowdStrike product," it added.
Meanwhile, DenizBank, a private bank based in Türkiye and owned by Emirates NBD, also reported disruption in operations, saying on X it is working to "put all our channels into service as soon as possible."
The Dutch carrier KLM said it had been "forced to suspend most" of its operations.
Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport warned that the outage was having a "major impact on flights" to and from the busy European hub. The chaotic morning coincided with one of the busiest days of the year for Schiphol.
Widespread problems were reported at Australian airports, where lines grew and some passengers were stranded as online check-in services and self-service booths were disabled – although flights were still operating.
In India, Hong Kong and Thailand, many airlines were forced to manually check in passengers. An airline in Kenya was also reporting disruption.
Media, hospitals disrupted
While the outages were being experienced worldwide, Australia appeared to be severely affected by the issue. Disruption reported on the site DownDetector included the banks NAB, Commonwealth and Bendigo, and the airlines Virgin Australia and Qantas, as well as internet and phone providers such as Telstra.
National news outlets – including public broadcaster ABC and Sky News Australia – were unable to broadcast on their TV and radio channels for hours. Some news anchors went on air online from dark offices, in front of computers showing "blue screens of death."
Hospitals in several countries also reported problems.
Britain's National Health Service said the outage caused problems at most doctors' offices across England. NHS England said in a statement said the glitch was affecting the appointment and patient record system used across the public health system.
Sky News, one of the country's major news broadcasters was off air, apologizing for being unable to transmit live, and soccer club Manchester United said on X that it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.
Some hospitals in northern Germany canceled all elective surgery scheduled for Friday, but emergency care was unaffected.
Israel said its hospitals and post office operations were disrupted.
In South Africa, at least one major bank said it was experiencing nationwide service disruptions as customers reported they were unable to make payments using their bank cards in stores. The New Zealand banks ASB and Kiwibank said their services were down as well.
Shipping was disrupted too: A major container hub in the Baltic port of Gdansk, Poland, the Baltic Hub, said it was battling problems resulting from the global system outage.