International IT outage hits UK’s transport, banking and broadcasting infrastructure

Downdetector reported sudden spikes in problems with websites including Microsoft applications, banking websites and airline apps (Picture: ABC)

Airports, banks and TV channels have all been knocked offline by a major global IT outage.

Flights have been grounded in the US, Australia and Germany.

In the UK, train passengers have been warned of travel chaos during rush hour with several operators affected by ‘widespread IT issues’.

One of our major TV channels, Sky News, was also off air on Friday.

Elsewhere, a health booking system used by doctors in England is also offline.

Downdetector reported sudden spikes in problems with websites including Microsoft applications, banking websites and airline apps. 

Microsoft 365 say they are investigating an issue impacting users’ ability to access apps and services.

‘Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions,’ they said on X this morning.

‘We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the issue.’

It comes amid reports of widespread IT outages affecting airlines, broadcasters and banks.

Major US carriers including American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines issued ground stops on Friday morning citing communication issues.

The alert came less than an hour after Microsoft 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 the earlier Microsoft cloud outage.

Berlin airport has halted all flights until 10am (8am GMT) due to a technical fault, a spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.

Earlier on Friday, airport operator BER said in a post on social media platform X that check-ins were delayed due to the error.

Ryanair has warned of ‘potential disruptions across the network’ due to a global third party system outage.

On the airline’s website, it posted: ‘Potential disruptions across the network (Fri 19 July) due to a global 3rd party system outage.

‘Affected passengers will be notified and any passengers travelling across the network on Fri 19 July should check their Ryanair app for the latest updates on their flight.

‘We advise passengers to arrive at the airport 3 hours in advance of their flight to avoid any disruptions.

‘We regret any inconvenience caused to passengers by this 3rd party IT issue, which is outside of Ryanair’s control and affects all airlines operating across the network.’

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