Flight cancellations: Are planes grounded?
Air travel around the world has been disrupted. Flights have been delayed and cancelled in the US, Europe and the UK, causing chaos at many international transport hubs.
Frontier Airlines has grounded flights for more than two hours and said the problem was caused by issues with Microsoft’s online services.
According to the warning from the FAA in the USA, American Airlines, United and Delta airlines requested a global halt on all flights from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Ryanair has told passengers to arrive an hour earlier than usual for flights, while Manchester Airport reported that ground crews were running operations manually.
All flights at Berlin Brandenburg Airport have been suspended, it was reported. It comes after the airport initially warned of delays in check-in due to a technical issue.
Indian low-cost airline IndiGo said it was affected by an ongoing issue with Microsoft Azure. It said customers may have difficulty accessing boarding passes and some flights may also be affected.
Gatwick Airport said it was relying on backup processes to handle passengers this morning but was keeping its terminals open. “This is a global Microsoft issue affecting some airlines’ check-in systems, baggage and security, including eGates,” it said.
Images of crowds gathering at Charleroi Airport in Brussels due to heavy delays have been shared.
Dutch airline KLM has announced it will suspend most of its operations, warning that flight management has become “impossible”.
Amadeus, the company that manages luggage at Heathrow Airport, confirmed it was affected.
Photos have emerged of airports across Europe using whiteboards and felt-tip pens to give passengers information about their flights.
Are there any train services today?
Thameslink, Southern Rail and Gatwick Express are facing “widespread IT issues across our network”, which has left drivers unable to access their schemes in some locations. It says this will cause potential delays, particularly on Thameslink and Great Northern. There have also been reports of ticket machines not working at some stations.
Northern rail company Merseyrail has warned that the crisis is affecting passenger information boards and the ability to print third-party tickets at stations.
Metro services in the US capital have been affected. Operator Metro Forward said its internal systems were down. Its website was inaccessible at the time of writing.
In London, staff were assigned to manually scan tickets at Waterloo.
Bettors
It seems even high street bookmakers are not immune to the outage. Ladbrokes told customers trying to access its website this morning that it was “experiencing some technical difficulties”. Downdetector, the website that recorded the outages, reported an increase in complaints from users trying to access the bookmaker today.
Sports, museums and entertainment
Manchester United have postponed their planned ticket sale for today. On their Matchday X account, they said they hoped to have tickets on sale by midday as they warned of ongoing website issues. Middlesbrough FC also said they were unable to process card payments.
Many cultural institutions across the country are set to grapple with card payments today. From Portsmouth’s Historic Quayside to Glasgow’s Science Centre and Monkey World in Dorset, a number of museums, visitor centres and cultural venues have warned that visitors will have to pay with cash.
News organizations
Sky News stopped broadcasting and was showing a message apologising to viewers this morning. It has since resumed broadcasting.
The Telegraph newspaper has faced problems logging into its computer systems and accessing the internet.
CBBC has crashed. A blue screen now tells viewers “Sorry! Something went wrong”. The service has now been restored.
Banks and financial institutions
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) has warned that its data feed is currently experiencing technical issues, meaning delays to company results and announcements. It said: “The RNS news service is currently experiencing a 3rd party global technical issue, which is preventing news from being published on londonstockexchange.com.”
Major Australian banks affected: Commonwealth Bank says it is “urgently investigating any impact to our systems and services” after some customers were unable to make payments.
In New Zealand, banks ASB and Kiwibank announced that their services were cut off.
There were images that showed that exchange rates were affected in Hong Kong.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England, which experienced a completely different type of IT outage yesterday, said it was “monitoring” the situation but that there had been no impact on its own systems.
Emergency services
The NHS said it was facing disruptions to its EMIS appointment and booking system but stressed it was taking measures to manage issues such as paper patient records and hand-written prescriptions.
911 outages have been reported in several US states, including Alaska, New York, Arizona, Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Ohio.
There have also been unconfirmed reports of outages in hospitals in the US in the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems that physicians use to store and organize patient data.
Israeli systems were also affected: the country’s Health Ministry warned that the cyber outage was disrupting hospital services, Haaretz reported. Social media posts showed some hospitals in Israel had switched to manual systems, while citizens were warned that they may have difficulty reaching emergency services by phone.
Health care
GP services across the UK are reporting problems that are causing major disruption to their practices, with some unable to access medical appointments, medical records, appointments and even prescriptions, according to social media posts from surgery centres.
Schools and universities
The education sector has not escaped unscathed. Many institutions have told children to stay at home on what will be the last school day of the year. Some parents have been told to call in if their children are sick because school IT systems are down. The University of Manchester said it was looking into the IT issues as an “urgent matter”.
Supermarkets
Social media users reported that even some supermarket self-service checkout points were affected by the outage, with photos from checkout points at Australian supermarket Woolworths showing the so-called “Blue Screen of Death” issue posted on X.
UK supermarkets also appear to have been affected. Some Morrisons customers are understood to have had difficulty making contactless payments this morning, while customers are complaining they are unable to pay at Waitrose stores. Sainsbury’s said it had not seen any issues with its systems.
Downdetector is reporting a flood of consumer complaints about Waitrose, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, but the supermarkets Telegraph journalists visited this morning appeared to be operating as normal.
Bars and hospitality
Pub chain JD Wetherspoon has confirmed that it is experiencing issues with its app, which customers use to order food and drinks to their tables. The chain has advised customers to pay for their meals and drinks with cash.
Coffee chain Gail’s has reportedly stopped accepting card payments due to the disruption.