Airports and airlines across Europe are experiencing technical issues as media companies, banks and telecom firms around the world also reported that system outages were disrupting their operations.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of Europe’s busiest hubs, is also being affected by a cyber outage, a spokesperson confirmed.
“The outage has an impact on flights flying from and to Schiphol,” he said, adding that it was not yet clear how many flights were affected.
Flights have partially resumed at Berlin Brandenberg airport in Germany after had been halted due to a technical fault, according to a spokesperson.
Earlier, airport operator BER said in a post on social media platform X that check-ins were delayed due to the error.
In the United States, major airlines ordered ground stops citing communications issues.
American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines and Allegiant Air grounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft said it resolved its cloud services outage that impacted several low-cost carriers.
It was not immediately clear whether the call to keep flights from taking off were related to an earlier Microsoft cloud outage.
Passengers at Edinburgh Airport in the UK were unable to use automated boarding pass scanners, and monitors at security displayed a message saying “server offline”, a Reuters witness reported.
Boarding passes were being checked manually, the witness said.
London Stansted Airport also said that some airline check-in services are being done manually, but “flights are still operating as normal”.
All Spanish airports impacted by the IT outage, their operator has said.
Three Indian airlines announced disruptions to their booking systems, matching the technical issues reported by flight operators around the world.
While Singapore’s airport said that some airlines there had been affected by the global outage.
Two German hospitals cancel elective operations
Two hospitals in the northern German cities of Lübeck and Kiel have cancelled elective operations scheduled for today, their operator said, citing a global IT outage linked to the cybersecurity company Crowdstrike.
Patient care and emergency services are being maintained, the University Clinic of Schleswig-Holstein added in a statement.
Meanwhile, GP surgeries in the UK have said they are unable to access patient records or book appointments.
NHS England has been contacted for comment after practices took to social media to report they cannot access the EMIS Web system.
EMIS Web is the most widely used clinical system for primary care in the UK.
Global IT outage not being treated as malicious – UK source
The global IT outage impacting media companies, banks and telecoms firms around the world is not being treated as a malicious act, a UK government security source said.
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said security experts were not treating it as a cyber-related security issue.
In Australia, media, banks and telecoms companies suffered outages, which the government said appears to be linked to an issue at Crowdstrike.
Crowdsourced website Downdetector showed outages at several banks and telecoms companies.
Crowdstrike ran a recorded phone message when Reuters contacted its technical support saying it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system relating to its Falcon sensor, without mentioning Australia.
There was no information to suggest the outage was a cyber security incident, the office of Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.
Australian state broadcaster ABC said it was experiencing a “major network outage”, without giving a reason.
In a pre-recorded message played on Sky News Australia as regular programming was disrupted, correspondent Tom Connell said the outage was not believed to the result of a hack.
“Our computers, our systems are down, all the things that make Sky News run down and indeed for many other major companies around the country,” he said.
In the UK, broadcaster Sky News apologised to viewers for an “interruption” to its broadcast but it has since resumed broadcasting with reduced service.
AWS cloud service provider said in a statement that it was “investigating reports of connectivity issues to Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS.”
It was not immediately clear whether all reported outages were linked to Crowdstrike problems or there were other issues at play.
Source: rte.ie