July 19, (THEWILL) – A major IT outage has grounded large-scale businesses including major banks, airlines, telecommunications, and companies worldwide.
A statement by Malta International Airport warned travellers of delays, saying it was working to avoid major disruptions to passengers but that delays “are expected”.
Flights were grounded at Sydney Airport, while three Indian airlines announced disruptions to their booking systems on Friday.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and all Spanish airports were also reported to be hit by the global IT outage. Air France said it is also suffering from the IT disruption, but not at Paris airports.
At Berlin Brandenburg airport in Germany, a spokeswoman told AFP on Friday morning, that flights were suspended.
“There are delays to check-in and flight operations had to be cancelled until 10:00 am (0800 GMT)”, the spokeswoman said, adding that she could not say when they would resume.
Irish airline, Ryanair, said it was also experiencing network disruptions.
“We’re currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a global third-party IT outage which is out of our control. We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least three hours before their scheduled departure time”, the Dublin-based carrier said in a statement posted on X.
In United States, the Federal Aviation Administration, confirmed air carriers including Delta, United and American Airlines grounded all flights over a communication issue.
Hong Kong’s airport also said some airlines had been affected, with its authority issuing a statement in which it linked the disruption to a Microsoft outage.
The UK’s biggest rail operator also warned of possible train cancellations due to IT issues on Friday morning. Sky News channel said the glitch had ended its morning news broadcast.
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) was hit by a technical glitch that delayed the start of trade and affected its market news service.
The LSE’s company news feed “is currently experiencing a third-party global technical issue, preventing news from being published. Technical teams are working to restore the service. Other services across the group, including London Stock Exchange, continue to operate as normal”, it said in a statement.
The large-scale outage wrought havoc on IT systems across Australia and New Zealand too, causing travel delays, hampering television broadcasts, and forcing supermarket systems offline.
Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator said the “large-scale technical outage” was caused by an issue with a “third-party software platform”, allaying initial fears of hacker involvement.
New Zealand media said banks and computer systems inside the country’s parliament were reporting issues.
Microsoft said in a statement it was taking “mitigation actions” in response to service issues.
“Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions”, Microsoft said in a post on X.
