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What disruptions have been reported after the global tech outage?

Saturday July 20 2024
airport

Screen showing an error is seen at a currency exchange store at Hong Kong International Airport amid system outages disrupting the operations, in Hong Kong, China on July 19, 2024. PHOTO | REUTERS

By REUTERS

A global tech outage that appeared to be related to issues at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, and Microsoft, affected operations at airports, airlines, banks and media outlets on Friday.

Here is a list of disruptions that have been reported across sectors:

Airports, Airlines

Airports and airlines around the globe warned of delays and cancellations or switched to manual check-ins, with some halting flights.

Read: Microsoft IT outage: Air travel, media, financial, telecoms hit by global cyber failure

Berlin airport temporarily halted all flights, a spokesperson told Reuters. Lufthansa's, Eurowings said it was halting domestic German flights as well as flights to and from Britain until 3 pm (1300 GMT).

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Spanish airport operator Aena reported a computer systems incident, while Lisbon airport, Portugal's biggest, also experienced disruptions.

Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and Brussels airport were also reportedly affected.

Top Dutch airline KLM said it could not handle flights on Friday and had suspended most of its operations.

Air France, KLM's parent company, also said its operations were disrupted.

Turkish Airlines was experiencing problems with ticketing, check-ins and booking, it said in a post on X.

Budapest Airport said several airline check-in systems were out of operation.

Major US carriers including American Airlines, opens new tab, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines, halted flights on Friday morning, citing communication issues.

American Airlines later said it had re-established operations. Frontier and Spirit, too, canceled directives to ground planes.

Ryanair said it had canceled a small number of flights.

An SAS spokesperson said the Scandinavian airline was expecting delays.

Qantas, Australia's national airline, and Sydney airport said planes were delayed but still flying.

Swiss air traffic control company Skyguide said it had temporarily reduced Swiss air traffic capacity by 30 percent.

Roughly 90 percent of flights at London Gatwick Airport and London Stansted Airport had been delayed or canceled.

Indian carriers including SpiceJet, Indigo, Akasa Air, Vistara, Air India and Air India Express were also experiencing problems on Friday.

Philippines' Cebu Air said it was facing technical issues and system downtime due to the Microsoft outage.

Financials

JPMorgan Chase & Co said that the majority of its ATMs were operating normally and that the bank was working to restore service to the remaining ATMs.

Read: JPMorgan plans expansion into Ghana and Kenya

Australia's largest bank, Commonwealth Bank, said earlier issues affecting PayID instant transfers had been resolved. Services including Netbank, the CommBank app, CommBiz, merchant payments and ATMs were available.

Several major oil and gas trading desks in London and Singapore were struggling to execute trades, six industry sources told Reuters.

The Singapore Exchange said some services including its price feed web service were momentarily impacted.

Macquarie Capital was unable to provide liquidity for unexpired warrants on HKEX.

Services of South African lenders Capitec Bank, and Absa, were fully restored after experiencing disruptions.

London Stock Exchange Groups', Workspace news and data platform suffered an outage that affected user access worldwide, causing disruption across financial markets. It said in a client memo that technical problems on FX spot and forward rates had been resolved and services restored.

Some brokerages in India were facing technical difficulties, traders at the brokerages told Reuters.

German insurer Allianz said it was experiencing a major outage that was impacting employees' ability to log on to their computers.

Some German banks were facing disruptions, a spokesperson for the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft financial industry association said on Friday, without providing details.

Barclays said its Smart Investor digital investing platform had been impacted.

Brazilian lender Bradesco said its digital platforms were unavailable on Friday.

Media

Britain's Sky News resumed broadcasting after an hours-long outage but was operating at minimal capacity and without many of its usual services.

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

England's National Health Service said bookings of doctors' appointments and patient records were disrupted, but emergency services had not been affected.

Several hospitals in the Netherlands had to scale down their operations, Dutch press agency ANP reported.

Victoria state police in Australia said some internal systems had been hit, but emergency services were operating normally.

Copenhagen's fire department said on X it was experiencing problems receiving automatically transmitted fire alarms and urged people to call 112 in case of a fire.

Two hospitals in the northern German cities of Luebeck and Kiel canceled elective operations scheduled for Friday.

Non-profit hospital chain Mass General Brigham said the outage affected many of its systems.

Due to the severity of the issue, it canceled all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures and medical visits for the day.

Quest Diagnostics said its patient services and customer contact teams were operating with reduced capacity and patients might experience longer waiting and service times.

Laboratory service provider Labcorp, said the outage was impacting some of its business systems, call center operations and results delivery, including physician and patient portals.

Hospital operator Providence said it restored a key functionality allowing nurses, physicians and caregivers to access patient records and perform clinical documentation, but other clinical applications and workstations were still impacted.

Shipping, Logistics

Maersk, said the outage affected some of its operated terminals, but all were back in operation within a few hours.

FedEx Corp said that its network was now operating across the globe after it faced substantial disruptions due to a worldwide IT outage experienced by a third-party software vendor.

Read: China probes FedEx after Huawei parcels misrouted

Rival UPS, also warned of potential delivery delays.

Railroad operator Union Pacific, said the CrowdStrike software outage had "varying levels of impact" across its network, but backup protocols helped it communicate with its teams and dispatchers.

It later said its network was open to business.

Others

Critical infrastructure in Germany had been affected, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said.

New Zealand's parliamentary computer systems were affected, according to Rafael Gonzalez-Montero, head of the parliamentary service.

Australia's Telstra Group was facing disruptions to some of its systems, a spokesperson for the telecom firm told Reuters.

The Baltic Hub container terminal in the Polish city of Gdansk said it was hit by the global outage in Microsoft systems and was working to solve the issue.

Read: Global alert as cyber attack spreads to 99 countries

The Paris Olympics organising committee said the cyber outage was slowing its operations, but the impact was limited, and ticket sales were unaffected.

The United Arab Emirates foreign ministry said its electronic systems were functioning normally again.

Maruti Suzuki, India's largest carmaker, said it briefly halted production and despatch operations. It resumed operations and did not expect a material impact from the incident.

Port Houston said two of its terminals experienced system failures as part of the global tech outage. All systems were later up and running.

U.S. telecom giant Verizon initially said "global IT issues" might impact some of its services and store operations could be limited, but its network was not impacted.

Soccer club Manchester United, said on X that it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.

Starbucks said its mobile order-ahead and pay features were temporarily down due to a worldwide tech outage.

North American pipeline operator Enbridge said it did experience some impacts to business applications as a result of the CrowdStrike software update.

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