widespread Microsoft outage disrupted flights, hospitals, banks, media outlets and other companies around the world today, triggering chaos for millions of businesses and institutions reliant on the widely used software.
Major US carriers American Airlines, United and Delta grounded all flights as hospitals and banks also reported systems outages amid what appears to be a global tech outage that affected Windows PCs.Customers travelling with the carriers said on social media their pilots had told them all systems were down and that all aircraft must remain grounded until they are brought back online.Many complained they had been left stranded in planes sitting on the tarmac before take-off or after landing at their destination – though the FAA’s website showed American Airlines cancelled its ground stop this morning.
Social media was also awash with reports from medical staff that electronic medical record (EMR) systems had crashed, taking hospitals nationwide offline.
And images shared to social media from around the world showed self-checkout tills, ATM machines, television channels and a host of other tech displaying error messages.
The website DownDetector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, also recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon.