Major global IT outage grounds flights, hits banks and businesses around the world (2024)

CrowdStrike says update ‘triggered a logic error’ that led to crashes

There were almost 3,000 flights canceled within or into the United States today as airlines and the world grappled with a massive IT outage that scrambled schedules and scrubbed trips.

Major airlines like Delta, United and American said they experienced disruptions.

As of around 8 p.m. there had been 2,945 cancellations within, into, or out of the United States, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.

Los Angeles International Airport, which is already famous for its traffic gridlock, was among the nation's airports warning passengers to check with their airlines before heading to the airport.

But LAX ranked down the list of U.S. airports with the most cancellations. Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, a major hub, topped the list of U.S. airports with cancellations, and Chicago O’Hare International Airport came in second, according to the website.

After many 911 and nonemergency call centers in the Alaska were impacted by the global IT outage, 911 systems in the state were back to normal today, Alaska State Troopers said.

New Hampshire and Plano, Texas, were among the states and communities that had reported problems with 911 due to the outage, but have since said they were functioning normally.

Online sports gambling site BetMGM said that it was being affected by the global IT outage as well.

The website announced earlier today that it “is experiencing temporary issues due to global IT outages.”

“We are working hard to resolve this and will update customers when we are up and running. Thank you for your patience,” BetMGM said on social media platform X.

Its website was down this evening for what it said was planned maintenance.

There were long lines of people trying to enter the United States from the Mexico border city of Ciudad Juarez after the global IT outage affected U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The U.S. agency said that the problem was processing delays due to outage, which has affected sectors of daily life from air travel to Starbucks mobile ordering services.

Video from Reuters showed long lines and signs leading up to the international bridge that warned drivers of extended waiting times.

Cybersecurity firmCrowdStrikesaw its shares plunge Friday, after a sofware update led to a major outage, affecting businesses across the world.

Shares of the company, which makes software to help firms manage their security in IT environments, opened down more than 14%, and closed down about 11%.

Microsoft, which also reported issues affecting its Azure cloud services and Microsoft 365 suite of apps, closed down just 0.74%.

Read the full story here.

Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, seemed to refer to the CrowdStrike outage on X on Friday, saying that overreliance on too few vendors creates “fragile systems.”

“All too often these days, a single glitch results in a system-wide outage, affecting industries from healthcare and airlines to banks and auto-dealers,” Khan wrote. “Millions of people and businesses pay the price.”

Khan cited remarks she gave at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in March, noting that the country’s antitrust laws were passed to safeguard undue concentration of economic power.

Such concentration, Khan wrote on X, can concentrate risk, creating cascading effects like shortages.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., today asked the acting chief information officer of the Defense Department for a briefing by July 26 on the IT issue causing widespread disruptions across the U.S.

“A single point of failure in a cybersecurity strategy has proven time and time again to be a threat to our national security,” Schmitt wrote in a letter.

Schmitt called for a re-examination of cyber safeguards “across the board.”

A Defense Department spokesperson said it was aware of the issues and that personnel were monitoring their networks for possible impacts.

“For operational security reasons, we do not comment on the status of our network operations, information systems or operations to assess cyber threats,” the statement read.

Schmitt wrote a letter in June pressing the department for a strategy to ensure “robust cybersecurity practices.”

CrowdStrike has mobilized employees to help customers still affected by the glitch, CEO George Kurtz said in a blog post this afternoon.

“Nothing is more important to me than the trust and confidence that our customers and partners have put into CrowdStrike. As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again,” Kurtz said.

He echoed CISA’s warning of hackers and scammers trying to exploit confusion over how to fix computers that froze due to the update.

“We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this. I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives,” Kurtz said.

Gary Baulos, 73, was scheduled for open-heart surgery today at Baptist Health hospital in Paducah, Kentucky. His daughter Alison Baulos said the surgery to clear eight blockages and repair an aneurysm was canceled due to the global technology outages.

“It reshuffles everything and leaves us with a lot of anxiety and uncertainty,” she said.

Alison said his father's surgery has not been rescheduled yet, but hopes it can be done on Monday.

“It’s kind of scary knowing that your loved one has this significant issue that warranted getting in right away,” she said. “And now you have to wait the weekend.”

In a statement to NBC News, Baptist Health said they’re “experiencing disruptions tied to the global CrowdStrike incident” and “have canceled some non-emergency procedures while we work to resolve the issue.”

The nightmare scenario that began unfolding this morning at U.S. airports continued well into the afternoon, with less than a quarter of all domestic flights departing on time as of 4 p.m., according to real-time data from Anuvu, an aviation intelligence group.

Most affected was Endeavor Airlines, a regional carrier based in Minnesota, with 40% of all its flights canceled and effectively zero departing on time, according to Anuvu data.

Among major carriers, all flights for Delta, Spirit and United airlines were seeing delays, the data showed.

While other airlines, like Frontier, JetBlue and Southwest, were not directly affected by the global outage, issues at affected airports still resulted in delays for some of those carriers' flights.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has been directing affected passengers to FlightRights.gov to learn about which airlines cover meals and hotels and provide free rebooking.

Electric vehicle makerTeslatemporarily halted production on lines at some of its manufacturing facilities Friday after an unprecedented IT outage impacted global operations due to system issues at cybersecurity firmCrowdStrike.

According to correspondence obtained by CNBC, Tesla’s IT teams notified employees that there was a “windows host outage,” and different systems were affected including “servers, laptops and manufacturing devices.” The IT teams informed Tesla employees that they may see a “blue screen” on their various devices.

Tesla CEOElon Musk, who also owns social media platform X, posted several complaints about the CrowdStrike outages to his account, which has more than 190 million followers, throughout the morning.

With Starbucks' mobile order-ahead feature still unavailable, baristas have directed customers with handwritten signs to "plz come to walk-up."

A Starbucks barista in Washington, D.C., told CNBC that her store had to manually write out tickets for customers this morning, while an anonymous Starbucks supervisor posted "We are SUFFERING" on Reddit. "Mobile orders and deliveries were through the roof, drive thru was wrapped around the building and two accidents in our parking lot," the post continued.

Starbucks' foot traffic had returned to normal in three New York City locations NBC News visited on Friday afternoon. Four customers told NBC News they had no issues ordering in person. The chain continued ahead with a $3 drink deal between noon and 6 p.m.

Reporting from Los Angeles International Airport

People are pretty jovial at Los Angeles International Airport despite delays and cancellations that continue to snarl travel due to today's IT issues.

Some people said they had been waiting hours in an effort to change flights and find a way to their destination. The line to rebook for United Airlines is long, snaking out of the airport where United employees are handing out bottles of water.

AUSTIN, Texas — The internet outages forced Texas to close all of its driver’s license offices across the state, and New York’s Department of Motor Vehicles couldn’t process transactions online and in its offices Friday morning.

The Texas Department of Public Safety operates driver’s license offices in most of the state’s 254 counties. The agency issues, renews and updates driver licenses or state ID cards and provides driver education courses.

The department said in a statement that “there is no current estimate” on when the offices will reopen.

In New York, the DMV said that by Friday afternoon, some systems had been restored and that it could begin performing online transactions. However, some in-person services were still offline.

At least three of its DMV offices closed for the day because of the outage, according to the agency’s website.

The widespread outages aren't the result of a cyberattack, but hackers are actively trying to capitalize on the confusion, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said.

“CISA has observed threat actors taking advantage of this incident for phishing and other malicious activity,” an agency alert says.

“CISA urges organizations and individuals to remain vigilant and only follow instructions from legitimate sources. CISA recommends organizations to remind their employees to avoid clicking on phishing emails or suspicious links,” it said.

The software that caused Friday's global IT outage was part of a routine update process.

Computers that received the faulty update now won’t operate without being started in a special recovery mode. That means each computer must be fixed manually.

BOSTON — Courts in Massachusetts and New York saw their operations disrupted Friday by the global internet outage.

A spokesperson for the Massachusetts judiciary said about half of its workstations were down while court transcription recording systems were not operating in a number of courthouses, resulting in delays in some court sessions.

Some court proceedings were also delayed in New York because of computer problems.

In Manhattan, a criminal court proceeding for Harvey Weinstein, who is charged with rape, started 90 minutes late because of disruptions to court and corrections computer systems.

In Southern California, Orange County Superior Court also reported technical issues.

A total of 51 hospitals under the Providence Southern California umbrella have been affected by the global IT outage in western states, according to the health care organization.

"Providence, like other organizations across the world, is impacted by the Crowdstrike outage," the organization said in a statement. "Our IT teams have been working overnight to respond to the issue and have restored key functionality in the Epic electronic health record so that nurses, physicians and other caregivers can access patient records and perform clinical documentation."

The organization said "other clinical applications and workstations continue to be impacted" despite the progress, but didn't specify what the applications and workstations are.

"Patient safety and access to care is always the top priority at Providence," the health organization said. "We will provide updates as new information becomes available."

Starbucks said it was among the companies impacted by the outage, resulting in a temporary outage of its mobile order ahead and pay features.

“We continue to welcome and serve customers in the vast majority of our stores and drive-thrus and are doing everything we can to bring all systems online as quickly as possible,” said Jaci Anderson, the company’s director of communications. “We apologize for any inconvenience.”

Nearly 4,300 flights have been canceled worldwide as of 12 p.m. E.T. due to the global IT outage, according to Cirium.

This equates to 3.9% of all scheduled flights globally. The figure is subject to change as the day progresses, Cirium said.

Microsoft 365 says it has completed its mitigation actions and its telemetry indicates all previously impacted Microsoft 365 apps and services have recovered.

“We’re entering a period of monitoring to ensure impact is fully resolved,” the company said.

The Maricopa County Elections Department in Arizona said the global IT outage is impacting some voting locations, as early voting in statewide primaries rolls out.

In a statement posted to X, the department directed voters to a web page to find out which polling places remain unaffected by the incident.

Early primary voting has been open for Grand Canyon states since July 3; Arizona's official primary election is Tuesday, July 30.

The state-level primaries will have a significant impact on the balance of power in the U.S. Senate and House: Former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is squaring off against Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb for the opportunity to face Democrat Ruben Gallego to replace outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

Meanwhile, six Republicans — including former Senate candidate Blake Masters, are vying to replace retiring Republican Debbie Lesko in the state's 8th Congressional District.

Several major U.S. hospitals were forced to cancel surgeries and doctor’s appointments amid theglobal computer outage.

Hospital staffers in New York and Boston said they were unable to access some medical records or were having trouble figuring out where to send critically ill patients as several operating rooms had been shut down.

“Every day, we have a plan that’s mapped out really carefully so that we can plan our resources,” said one employee of an affected New York City hospital system. “That’s all blown up,”the staffer said, asking to not be identified because the person wasn’t authorized to speak on behalf of the health care system.

Read the full story here.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella released the company's first statement about the outage early Friday afternoon, saying: “CrowdStrike released an update that began impacting IT systems globally. We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online.”

Journalists and Republicans leaving Milwaukee after this week's Republican National Convention may have a feeling of déjà vuif their travel plans are interrupted by this global outage.

It's the second in-person GOP convention in a row (2016 and 2024, since 2020 was largely virtual) that ended with a major transportation-related outage.

Southwest reported a "technology outage" on July 20, 2016, the second to last day of the convention in Cleveland. The company ultimately said more than 2,000 flights were delayed or cancelled. But while the outage happened midweek, travelers were still feeling some effects of it days later and this reporter had to drive colleagues with cancelled flights home from Cleveland.

Reporting from JFK International Airport in New York

Travelers stuck this morning at JFK Airport in New York met the delays with resignation, weariness and a need to hit the bar.

Colby Black, 45, took the delays in stride, even though he wasn’t sure when his rescheduled flight to Los Angeles would take off. It was originally set to depart at 6 a.m.

“I’m just tired. I want to sleep,” said Black, who woke up at 3 a.m. “But otherwise, yeah, it happens.”

One mother said she hadn’t slept the night before, just so she and her infant son could get to JFK on time.

“I’m still up, running on no sleep,” she said as she was seated on a barstool beside a heavy pour of chilled white wine. She wasn’t originally planning to order a preflight drink.

“Hell no. I got to the airport at 4 o'clock this morning,” she said.

Video from the airline tracker Flightradar24 shows how U.S. air travel was scaled back dramatically in the early morning hours, as airlines and airports scrambled to deal with IT issues related to a security bug.

An image that has instilled panic in computer users for decades popped up on screens worldwide today: the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death.”

Appearing everywhere from Macy’s flagship store in New York City toairports in India, the Blue Screen of Death has long prompted groans and frantic questions of “Did my work save?” It’s a Microsoft Windows error screen indicative of a system crash — meaning a computer issue has resulted in the operating system no longer being able to run safely.

An unwanted sight that has become so widely known over its more than 30-year existence, it’s sometimes referred to by its acronym, BSoD. Today, the blue screen taunted millions globally amid awidespread technology outagethat halted flights, knocked broadcasters off the air and disconnected some emergency phone lines. Texas-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said early today that the outage was the result of a “defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” not a cyberattack, and that a fix had been deployed.

Read the full story here.

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz released an updated statement on X, assuring customers that this was not a "security or cyber incident," and that their information is still protected.

"We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on," Kurtz added.

He said that he would provide updates via his X account, LinkedIn and the CrowdStrike website.

The Federal Aviation Administration says it is aware of reports of a systems outage causing disruptions in service, including 911.

“We’re working closely with other federal agencies to provide assistance and determine the extent of these service disruptions,” the FAA said.

Speaking on CNBC, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said he is “tracking all the various impacts hitting different forms of transportation.”

Buttigieg said the agency has reminded airlines as they deal with the outage of their “responsibilities to take care of passengers if they experience major delays.”

Buttigieg also said public transit systems are running normally despite the ongoing global IT outage, but some consumers might encounter websites that are down or ticketing systems with minor problems.

“This wasn’t a cyberattack,” he said but the agency will continue to work with infrastructure and transportation providers to ensure they properly maintain their cyber defenses.

The Chicago Department of Aviation is monitoring the global IT outage that has impacted air travel nationwide, it said in a statement.

"CDA officials are working diligently with federal and airline partners at both O’Hare and Midway International Airports to restore operations as swiftly as possible," the department said. "The CDA is committed to providing all necessary assistance to our passengers during this time."

The CDA encouraged anyone flying out of Chicago airports today to check their flight status before making the trip to the airport.

Reporting from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport

The ticketing line at Spirit Airlines in Atlanta is hundreds of people long as travelers try to get information about flights.

One traveler near the front says she waited for over four hours.Employees calling out specific flight numbers had to shout over the crowd to be heard.When asked if she was confident about leaving Atlanta today, one woman in line said, “A snowball’s chance.”

The Orange County Fire Authority in California said the outage had temporarily affected some of its internal systems, but that its responses to emergency incidents were uninterrupted, and its 78 fire stations did not experience any delays in service.

“Our IT team continues to monitor the situation,” the fire authority said.

A routine software update causedcascading chaos today that has engulfed global businesses from airports and banks to retail and law enforcement.

It wasn’t a cyberattack, but was caused by one of the world’s largest cybersecurity companies deploying a flawed update while trying to keep its customers safe from hackers.

CrowdStrike, acybersecurity companybased in Austin, Texas, that’s widely used by businesses and government agencies that run on Microsoft computers, said that a defect in one of its updates for computers running the Windows operating system had caused the issue. The result was arguably the largest global information technology outage in history.

Read the full story here.

The Federal Reserve is out with an assurance that its systems are working amid the global tech outage.

“Critical Federal Reserve Systems are operating normally.We are monitoring the situation and working closely with industry and other government agencies to assess the situation,” the central bank said in a statement to CNBC.

Reporting from Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport

Hello from the Milwaukee Airport, which is a mix of politicians, red hats and police officers.

Some officers from North Carolina seem to have been here for a while — one of them is sleeping on the floor. One of the airlines just announced thatit is bringing out a snack cart.

It’scrowded but quiet here, and the general vibe I would say is pretty tired — I would imagine most of these people were up past midnight watching former President Donald Trump’s speech. Most of the seats at the gates are occupied (as is a lot of the floor) with weary travelers.

FlightAware, which tracks airline operations, said this morning that 40 flights had been canceled, with another 65 delayed.

FedEx says it has experienced “substantial disruptions” throughout its networks due to the global IT outage .

The company said contingency plans have been activated to mitigate impact, but delays are possible for packages that have a delivery commitment of today.

FedEx advised customers to check its service alerts page for updates and to track shipments on its website, fedex.com.

A White House official said President Joe Biden has been briefed on the outage and his team is in touch with CrowdStrike and impacted entities. His team is engaged across the interagency to get sector by sector updates throughout the day, and is standing by to provide assistance, the official said.

The president was also briefed on the drone attack overnight in Tel Aviv.

Hospitals and medical centers across the United States are turning patients away in the the wake of the global IT problems today.

The Harris Health Quentin Mease Health Center in Houston said it was canceling all elective procedures and outpatient care, while Mass General Brigham in Boston canceled "all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures, and medical visits are cancelled today."

The Boston hospital said in a statement: "A major worldwide software outage has affected many of our systems at Mass General Brigham, as well as many major businesses across the country."

Mass General assured the public that "we continue to care for all patients currently receiving care in our hospitals."

The University of Miami Health System said its facilities were open but warned that there would be delays due to computers records being unavailable.

A fault with an update issued by cybersecurity companyCrowdStrikeled to a cascading effect among global IT systems today, with industries ranging from banking to airlines facing outages.

Banks and health care providers saw their services disrupted and TV broadcasters went offline as businesses worldwide grappled with the ongoing outage. Air travel has been hit hard, too, withplanes groundedand services delayed.

So what happened, exactly? CNBC takes a look.

Read the full article here from CNBC.

The IT outages that are affecting businesses across the world have caused more than half of flights delayed or canceled by 8 a.m. ET across the United States, according to data from FlightAware.

An airline employee holds up a sign informing travelers as they line up at the check-in counters of the Hong Kong International Airport this morning.

Crowds build up at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand.

An employee at Berlin Airport speaks tries to update passengers as widespread outages caused mass confusion.

George Kurtz, president and CEO of CrowdStrike, the company at the center of today's enormous IT outages, says the problems could persist for some time yet.

"It could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover," Kurtz told NBC's "TODAY" show this morning.

Kurtz said the company was "deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travelers, to anyone affected by this," adding the issue has been fixed on their end.

"Many of the customers are rebooting the system, and it’s coming up, and it’ll be operational because we fixed it on our end," he said. "We’re just trying to sort out where the negative interaction was," he said of the faulty update that affected Windows PCs.

The Microsoft cloud computing outages that left airports, shops and broadcasters without services will not be easily fixed, tech experts have warned.

Fixing the issues may involve a manual effort on the part of users, Omer Grossman, CIO at cybersecurity firm CyberArk, told CNBC.

“It turns out that because the endpoints have crashed — the Blue Screen of Death — they cannot be updated remotely and this the problem must be solved manually, endpoint by endpoint. This is expected to be a process that will take days,” he said.

The global IT outage is having a “profound impact,” and nothing similar has ever been seen before, Satnam Narang, senior staff researcher at Tenable, told CNBC today.

Commuters riding the bus and train services in New York will have to listen closely to station announcements after the MTA's systems were taken offline due to the outage.

The "train and bus service is unaffected," Metropolitan Transportation Authority said this morning in a statement.

Washington's transit agency, WMATA, said the train's start time of 5 a.m. was delayed and commuters could experience more delays on its buses and trains.

Travelers walk past a departures board displaying a blue error screen in Newark International Airport this morning.

The New Hampshire Department of Safety said its 911 service was back online early today after an interruption related to the global outage of Microsoft cloud computing services that began around 1 a.m. ET.

"911 server system has been fully restored and emergency calls to 911 are being processed normally," the department's division of emergency services and communications said in an update, which confirmed the service was back as of 3 a.m.

It said the cause of the outage was under investigation but the department was "aware of information technology outages reported nationwide." The department also urged people not to see if 911 is working with "test calls."

NBC News’ business and data correspondent Brian Cheung explains that CrowdStrike is deploying a fix that caused computer outages worldwide. He said people should not try calling 911 to test the system.

Reporting from Hong Kong

When Patricia Sweeney arrived at gate 133 of Tokyo's Haneda Airport, her American Airlines flight bound for New York was nowhere to be found. It was first delayed by an hour, then canceled.

"I'm upset but taking it in strides," said Sweeney, who lives in Brooklyn and works in finance and was on a business trip. Another American Airlines flight next to her gate was also canceled. "You could just hear a roar of the passengers," she said. "People are not happy."

As she waited for updates from the airline, Sweeney went to the business class lounge which was overcrowded with other affected passengers.

"I told the hotel I had stayed at to rebook a room. But they said they had a system outage," she said over the phone while waiting for her baggage. The hotel rebooked her manually.

While Sweeney was offered a flight for tomorrow morning by the airline, she said a representative later told her that it's still not confirmed.

The outage happened while most stores in the United States were closed for the night. But it has been wreaking havoc elsewhere.

In Britain, grocery chain Waitrose put up signs in some of its outlets warning customers it was only accepting cash.

“All card-readers have failed this morning!” read a handwritten message in one branch in Petersfield, southern England “Sorry for any inconvenience caused!”

In Australia and New Zealand, scores of people posted on social media that they were locked out of their online bank accounts.

“We’re aware of issues currently impacting many banks and businesses across NZ,” the state-owned Kiwibank said on X, replying to a number of users reporting problems. “Our teams are working to resolve the access issues impacting our app and internet banking at the moment, and we hope to have this resolved shortly.”

Cybersecurity firmCrowdStrikesaw its shares plunge today, after an update led to a major outage impacting businesses across the world.

Shares of the company, which makes software to help firms manage their security in IT environments, tanked 15% in U.S. premarket trading.

Microsoft, which also reported issues affecting its Azure cloud services and Microsoft 365 suite of apps, fell 2% in premarket trading.

Read the full story here.

Watch the full special report on a massive global technical outage tied to CrowdStrike. This cybersecurity provider has knocked critical computer infrastructure offline nationwide and worldwide.

Reporting from MAINZ, Germany

A university hospital system in northern Germany has cancelled elective procedures and all outpatient services today due to the IT outage. University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, with its locations in Kiel and Lübeck, says its patient care and emergency services are not affected.

The British National Health Service said the outage was causing "disruption in the majority of GP practices," referring to the general practitioners who act as a first point of contact to access most health services in the U.K.

These family doctors can't access the appointment and patient record system, an NHS spokesperson said, adding that receptionists would be "using paper patient records and handwritten prescriptions,"

Reporting from Hong Kong

It was not a cyberattack but a faulty update, said George Kurtz, chief executive of CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company being held responsible for today's tech outage.

"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts," he said.

"The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed," added in a post on X. He said customers were impacted by a defective update that affected PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system.

"This is not a security incident or cyberattack," he said.

"We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels," Kurtz said, adding, "Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers."

Reporting from Hong Kong

This morning's enormous tech outage was caused, in part, by a "storage incident" that impacted a number of Microsoft's Azure cloud services, which powers everything from banks to airport handling systems.

The issue has been mitigated, Microsoft said in a statement, but the company is still "in the process of validating recovery," of the affected services.

Microsoft said another issue is the "CrowdStrike Falcon agent," a cybersecurity platform used by businesses globally that is separate from Microsoft, that was causing the "blue screen of death," on PCs running the Windows operating system.

"We can confirm the affected update has been pulled by CrowdStrike," it said.

CrowdStrike said in a statement on Reddit, that its engineering team had reverted the software updates affecting the issue, and outlined a temporary technical workaround.

Reporting from LONDON

The all-too-familiar Windows error screen — often dubbed the "blue screen of death" by some weary users — could seen on public screens across the United States this morning.

A big screen outside Macy's at Herald Square in New York showed the blue screen and a "Recovery" message, as did terminals at LAX Airport and Minneapolis- St. Paul Airport.

The blue screen curse struck across the world too, with social media users posting photos from London, New Delhi and Istanbul.

Reporting from Hong Kong

Some of the world's busiest airports have been hit with average departure delays of more than an hour, data from the flight-tracking platform flightradar24 showed.

Amsterdam's Schipol Airport was experiencing average delays of 75 minutes, with 88% of its flights delayed today. Dozens of flights have been delayed with an average of nearly 50 minutes in both Barcelona and Rome.

Major airports in India, including in the capital city of New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai are topping charts with delays of up to an hour.

At one of the world’s busiest cargo hubs, Memphis International Airport in Tennessee, 97% flights have been delayed with average delay of an hour.

Reporting from Hong Kong

Airports worldwide are advising passengers to arrive earlier for their flights as airlines scramble to check-in passengers manually.

"The affected airlines have switched to manual check-in to continue serving passengers," Hong Kong's airport authority said in a statement, adding it had activated its "emergency response mechanism."

India's New Delhi airport said "some of its services" had been impacted, while Germany's Berlin airport warned of check-in delays. Some airlines at Singapore's Changi airport are also checking-in passengers manually, the airport said in a post on X.

Delays were reported by two of Australia's biggest airports, in Sydney and Melbourne.

Reporting from LONDON

The British broadcaster Sky News, NBC's partner in the U.K., was back on air early today after 9.30 a.m. (4.30 a.m. ET) after being taken offline by the ongoing issues related to Microsoft cloud services.

The broadcaster's business presenter, Ian King, said this morning was "the biggest IT outage the world has ever seen."

A sign notifies customers of a temporary closure due to IT issues at a Liquor store in Canberra, Australia, today.

Three major U.S. airlines, United, American and Delta, have all ordered global ground stops, according to a senior Democratic member of the House Cybersecurity Committee.

Eric Swalwell,D-Calif., said on X that the airlines had not issued statements to this effect so far and he urged them to do so.