Global tech outage delays flights and disrupts services around the world
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Passengers crowding departure counters of Cebu Pacific airline at Terminal 3 of Ninoy Aquino International airport in Manila, on July 19.
PHOTO: AFP
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AUSTIN, Texas - A global tech outage that appeared to be related to issues at global cyber-security firm CrowdStrike and Microsoft was affecting operations in various sectors on July 19, including airports, airlines, media and banks.
Below is a list of disruptions that have been reported:
Airlines, airports
Berlin airport halted all flights until 10am (4pm Singapore time) due to a technical fault, the operator said.
Spanish airport operator Aena reported a computer systems “incident” at all Spanish airports which may cause flight delays.
Amsterdam’s airport Schiphol, one of the major air transport hubs in Europe, said it was affected by a global cyber outage, and advised travellers to contact their airlines.
Top Dutch airline KLM said it could not handle flights on July 19 and that it suspended most of its operations. Air France, KLM’s parent company, said that its operations were disrupted.
Major US carriers including American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines issued ground stops on the morning of July 19, citing communication issues.
An SAS spokesperson said the Scandinavian airline was expecting delays.
Australia’s national airline Qantas and Sydney Airport said planes were delayed but still flying.
Passengers at Britain’s Edinburgh Airport were unable to use automated boarding pass scanners on July 19, and monitors at security displayed a message saying “server offline”, a Reuters witness reported.
Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific said in a note to customers that self-service check-in facilities at Hong Kong International Airport were unavailable due to “unexpected technical issues”. It advised customers to arrive early or check in online before coming to the airport.
Financials
Australia’s largest bank, Commonwealth Bank, said some customers had been unable to transfer money due to the service outage.
Several major oil and gas trading desks in London and Singapore were struggling to execute trades due to a cyber outage on July 19, six industry sources told Reuters.
Macquarie Capital was unable to provide liquidity for unexpired warrants on HKEX due to technical problems.
South Africa’s Capitec said card payments, ATM and app services were fully restored following significant nationwide disruptions linked to CrowdStrike.
LSEG Group’s Workspace news and data platform suffered an outage on July 19 that affected user access worldwide, causing disruption across financial markets.
Media
Sky News, one of Britain’s major television news channels, was off air on July 19.
Australia’s state broadcaster ABC said it was experiencing a “major network outage”, without giving a reason.
Regular programming at Sky News Australia was disrupted.
Emergency services, healthcare
A health booking system used by doctors in England is offline, medical officials said on social media platform X on July 19.
Several hospitals in the Netherlands had to scale down their operations because of the power outage, Dutch press agency ANP reported.
Victorian state police in Australia said some internal systems had been hit by the outage, but emergency services were operating normally.
Copenhagen’s fire department said on X it was experiencing problems receiving automatically transmitted fire alarms following the outage, and urged people to call 112 in case of a fire.
Other
A spokesperson for New Zealand’s Parliament said its computer systems had also been affected. REUTERS
