Microsoft IT outage latest – Windows glitch sparks chaos as airlines down flights

You can read our full report on the outages here.

Peter Buttigieg, the US secretary of transportation, posted overnight to say that his department will hold all airlines ‘to their responsibilities to meet the needs of passengers’.

(His post specifically calls out Frontier – but that is presumably because it was posted early in the outage, before the full scale became clear.)

The outage has led Washington, DC to delay the opening of its Metro service. It usually opens at 5am – but is still closed.

Some London Stock Exchange services were suffering disruptions on Friday amid a global IT outage that has affected companies around the world.

The LSE said securities trading was unaffected by the outage, but its regulatory news service was not working on Friday morning.

A spokesperson said: “We are currently experiencing a third party technical issue which is impacting some of our services.

“There is no impact to securities trading on the London Stock Exchange. We are working on resolving this issue as soon as possible and will continue to provide updates to our customers.”

Meanwhile, payments giant Visa said it was unaffected by the outage, meaning payment processing on its systems is continuing as normal.

A spokesperson for Visa said: “There is no indication of any impact on Visa’s ability to process payments from this issue.

“Our systems are operating normally.

“We are aware of reports of people being unable to make payments and are working with our financial institution clients to understand any impact on their services to cardholders and merchants.”

London markets dropped in value after news of the IT failure, which has caused issues around the world for banks, supermarkets, airlines and other major institutions.

The FTSE 100 fell 0.8% in early trading as investors were spooked by the outage potentially hitting companies’ bottom lines if it goes on too long.

The issues appear to be affecting checkouts at supermarkets. Some report that their systems have gone offline entirely, while others say their payment systems have stopped working.

Here’s one of those affected checkouts in Australia:

In a statement to The Independent it said: “Some retail payment machine services have been impacted but they are slowly coming back online, and cash/pdq payments being taken in the meantime, and while some airline check-in services have reverted to being done manually – this will take longer than normal for passengers if they haven’t already checked-in before coming to the airport – all of the airports main operational systems are unaffected and flights are still operating this morning.”

Sky News has returned back to air after the broadcaster was affected by the major IT outage affecting businesses across the world.

After welcoming viewers back to the channel, the morning anchor reported on the news saying: “A major global IT outage is hitting businesses worldwide, including here at Sky News.”

The presenters referred to printed out notes during the report on Friday morning as the broadcaster got back on its feet.

Sky News’ online page, YouTube and TV channel previously displayed an apology for the interruption to the broadcast.

Following the outage, a Sky News spokesperson said in a statement to the PA news agency: “Sky News has not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, we apologise for the interruption.

“All the news is still available online, on the Sky News app, website, and across our social media accounts.

“We are working hard to restore all services.”

During the disruption, Sky News sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao shared a photo of the breakfast team in a post on X, formerly Twitter, and said the team were “obviously not on air” but that they are “trying” to return.

“The worldwide IT outage experienced this morning is unprecedented in the range and scale of systems it has impacted. Although we cannot speculate on the cause of this outage just yet, it appears that this might be a server error emanating from one server supplier,” says Harjinder Lallie, a cyber security expert from the University of Warwick.

“This IT ‘catastrophe’ highlights the need for greater resilience, a greater focus on backup systems, and possibly even a need to rethink whether we are using the most resilient operating systems for such critical systems”

Heathrow airport has just issued a statement: “Microsoft is currently experiencing a global outage which is impacting select systems at Heathrow. Flights are operational and we are implementing contingency plans to minimise any impact on journeys. Passengers are advised to check with their airline for the latest flight information.”

Eurowings, the budget airline of Lufthansa, says: “Due to an IT malfunction, there are currently disruptions in global air traffic. The check-in and boarding processes are impaired and online check-in is not possible. There may be delays and flight cancellations. Please check your flight status.”