The ‘most serious IT outage the world has ever seen’ has sparked global chaos today, grounding planes and trains, disrupting the NHS, closing shops, halting football ticket sales, and knocking banks and TV channels offline.

The devastating technical fault caused Windows computers to suddenly shut down, prompting departure boards to turn off at airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, and Edinburgh on the busiest day for British airports since Covid.

NHS England advised patients not to attend GP appointments unless informed otherwise due to problems with the system used to schedule appointments. Train passengers have been told to expect delays due to ‘widespread IT issues across the entire network.’ In a sign of the global impact of the IT failure, passengers were seen sleeping in passageways at Los Angeles International Airport, huge queues formed at terminals across Spain, and in Delhi staff set up a makeshift whiteboard to record departures. Shops in Australia shut down or went cashless after digital checkouts stopped working, while in the US emergency services lines went down in Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Ohio.

Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike admitted responsibility for the error that hit Microsoft 365 apps and operating systems and said a ‘fix has been deployed.’ The American firm said it was caused by a ‘defect found in a single content update’ and insisted the issue ‘was not a security incident or cyberattack.

Windows is the most used operating system in the world, meaning the outage is affecting almost every part of the global economy, with supermarkets and cafes, including Morrisons, Waitrose, B&Q, and the bakery chain Gail’s, unable to take card payments.

Technology experts have said the disruption is at the scale expected from Y2K or the ‘Millennium Bug,’ a computer programming shortcut that was forecast to cause chaos as the year changed from 1999 to 2000 but never materialized.

I don’t think it’s too early to call it: this will be the largest IT outage in history,” said Troy Hunt, a prominent security consultant, in a social media post. “This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s happened this time.”

TV channels including Sky News and CBBC spent time off air this morning, and football clubs including Manchester United and Blackburn Rovers have told fans they will have to delay the release of match tickets. Schoolcomms, a parent communication app used by thousands of schools, is also reporting ‘issues.’

As engineers battle to restore services:

• NHS services across the country are hit as GP booking systems go down.
• Huge queues are seen at airports with Ryanair flights grounded and trains also canceled.
• Experts reveal the truth behind blackout as computer users see the ‘blue screen of death.
• US – American Airlines and Delta ground ALL flights as 911 and hospital systems go down.
• Australia – Qantas makes stunning announcement to passengers as global crash sends travel into chaos.

Around the World:

• Heathrow: Flights are “operational” but the airport is “experiencing delays.
• Gatwick: Passengers may experience delays but should still arrive at their scheduled check-in time.
• Luton Airport: A global IT outage is affecting some airlines and operations are continuing with manual systems.
• Stansted Airport: Some airline check-in services are being done manually as a result of the IT outage, but flights are still operating as normal.
• Manchester Airport: The international IT outage has affected ground handling services for some airlines – specifically those that use Swissport. Some processes like check-in and boarding are taking longer than usual for affected airlines.
• Liverpool Airport: The airport is seeing an impact, it is affecting some airlines, but not all, at check-in.
• Edinburgh Airport: The IT outage is causing longer waiting times.

Spanish airports are reporting technical faults and delays. A Sky News correspondent in Asia says local media are reporting “chaos” at Hong Kong’s airport. Virgin Airlines has also reported problems. Australian airports are said to be affected. Berlin’s Brandenburg airport put out a message saying it was suffering delays at check-in “due to a technical fault.” Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, one of the busiest in Europe, says the computer failure is having an impact on flights “to and from” Schiphol and that it is now analyzing that impact. Budapest Airport in Hungary is also reportedly experiencing disruption.

Government Response:

The UK Government has called an emergency Cobra meeting to discuss the situation.

Liberal Democrat Cabinet Office Spokesperson Christine Jardine MP said: “The public needs to be reassured that the disruption to their travel or their desperately needed GP appointments will be minimized. Getting critical infrastructure up and running again must be priority number one. The National Cyber Security Centre should also be working with small businesses and other organizations to help them deal with the outage.

Financial Markets:

The LSE Group, which operates the London Stock Exchange, said it was experiencing a global technical issue preventing news from being published.

Bristol Water said it is experiencing company-wide IT issues, but the billing department remains operational.

Tech Expert Commentary:

Dr. Mark Gregory, associate professor at RMIT University’s School of Engineering, said he believed an update to one of CrowdStrike’s software products, called Falcon, is ‘bricking’ computers running Windows, making them inoperable.

CrowdStrike has confirmed a faulty update was responsible for sparking the chaos.

CrowdStrike’s statement: “Crowdstrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

Summary:

The Microsoft outage, caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update, has led to global chaos affecting flights, trains, GP services, and various industries. Engineers are working to restore systems as quickly as possible. The UK Government has called an emergency Cobra meeting to address the situation, with global impacts expected to continue until a full resolution is achieved.