Cyber Outage Grounds Flights and Disrupts Microsoft Services
- A global tech outage caused disruptions in multiple industries, including airlines, broadcasters, banking, and healthcare.
- Flights from major US airlines were grounded due to communication issues reported by the Federal Aviation Administration.
- Microsoft was investigating issues affecting user access to its apps and services, raising concerns about the duration of the ground stop.
A significant global tech outage on Friday, July 19, caused widespread disruptions across various sectors, including airlines, broadcasting, banking, and healthcare. Major airlines such as American Airlines, Delta, United, and Allegiant Air grounded flights due to communication issues. This disruption followed a cloud services outage reported by Microsoft, which affected several low-cost carriers, although the connection between the two incidents remains unclear. The impact of the outage was felt globally, with airports in cities like Tokyo, Amsterdam, and Berlin experiencing system failures and delays. Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline, also reported issues with its booking systems. In the UK, medical booking systems were offline, and Sky News, a prominent broadcaster, apologized for being unable to transmit live due to the outage. Financial institutions across the globe, from Australia to India and South Africa, warned clients of service disruptions. The London Stock Exchange Group reported an outage affecting its data and news platform, Workspace. Amazon's AWS cloud service acknowledged connectivity issues with Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces, further complicating the situation. Despite the extensive disruptions, Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator stated there was no evidence to suggest the outage was a cyber security incident. As investigations continue, the full scope and cause of the outages remain uncertain, leaving many industries grappling with the fallout.