A system failure caused planes with TV channels, airports and banks around the world to go down in a massive outage, causing Windows computers to suddenly shut down

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Microsoft’s massive outage caused chaos around the world – grounding flights and knocking hospitals, GP surgeries, train services, banks, stock markets and TV channels offline.

A technical fault caused a sudden shutdown of Windows computers, causing departure boards at airports including Gatwick and Edinburgh to suddenly shut down on one of the busiest days for global aviation since Covid.

Britain’s biggest train company told passengers to expect delays due to “widespread IT issues”, Ryanair and Wizz Air warned of “disruption”, and NHS staff described logging in to find most non-clinical systems down.

Microsoft confirmed it was investigating an “issue” with its 365 apps and operating systems, and said users should expect “service degradation.” American cyber security firm CrowdStrike admitted responsibility for the bug and said it was “working on it”.

Windows is the most widely used operating system in the world, meaning the outage affects almost every part of the global economy – restaurants and cafes, including bakery chain Gail’s, cannot accept card payments.

Around the world, banks, supermarkets and other major institutions said computer problems were disrupting services, while huge queues were seen at airports including Gatwick and Luton.

GPs were also affected, with practices in Cumbria, Cheshire, Yorkshire and the West Midlands saying on social media that their systems had been hit.

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The LSE Group, which runs the London Stock Exchange, said it was experiencing a global technical problem that was preventing the release of reports.

Even football clubs have been affected, with Blackburn Rovers telling fans its ticketing platform is down.

Microsoft 365 says they are investigating an issue affecting users’ ability to access apps and services.

“Our services continue to see continuous improvement as we continue to take mitigation measures,” they said on X this morning.

“We still expect users to continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the problem.”

It comes amid reports of widespread IT outages affecting airlines, broadcasters and banks.

Among the companies affected is Ryanair, whose airline posted on its website: “Possible network disruption (Friday 19 July) due to global third party system outage.

“Affected passengers will be notified and all passengers traveling on the network on Friday 19 July should check the Ryanair app for the latest updates to their flight.

“We advise passengers to arrive at the airport three hours before departure to avoid disruption.

“We regret any inconvenience caused to passengers by this third party IT issue, which is beyond Ryanair’s control and affects all airlines operating across the network.”

Edinburgh Airport said an IT outage was causing longer waiting times.

Stansted Airport said some airline check-in services were being carried out manually as a result of the IT outage, but “flights are still operating as normal”.

Meanwhile, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) – the parent company of Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern – warned passengers to expect delays due to the problem.

The firm said on social media: “We are currently experiencing extensive IT issues across our network. Our IT teams are actively investigating the root cause of the issue.

“We are unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-term cancellations, particularly on the Thameslink and Great Northern networks.

“Additionally, other key systems are affected, including our real-time customer information platforms. We will provide further updates as soon as possible. In the meantime, please check your route regularly before you travel.’

In the US, emergency services are said to be down in Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Ohio.

Microsoft users around the world took to social media to express their frustration and confusion that their computers were also shutting down.

Sky Sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao wrote on X: ‘Obviously we’re not on air – trying @SkyNews Breakfast.’

This also led to travel chaos as passengers trying to board were unable to check in due to technical issues.

American Airlines was forced to ground its flights this morning due to a communications problem, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration’s status page.

Low-cost carriers Frontier Airlines, a unit of Frontier Group Holdings, Allegiant and SunCountry reported outages that affected operations.

Frontier previously said its operations were temporarily affected by a “major Microsoft technical outage,” while SunCountry said a third-party vendor affected its reservation and check-in facilities, without naming the company.

“Allegiant’s website is currently unavailable due to an issue with Microsoft Azure,” Nevada-based Allegiant said in a statement to CNN.

A message on the CrowdStrike support page reads: “CrowdStrike is aware of reports of crashes on Windows hosts related to the Falcon Sensor.

‘Symptoms include hosts experiencing an error checking error\blue screen related to the Falcon sensor. Our technical teams are actively working to resolve this issue and there is no need to open a support ticket.

“Status updates will be posted below as more information becomes available, including when the issue is resolved.”

Sky News and Microsoft have been contacted for comment.

Just two months ago, Microsoft suffered another major outage after Bing.com, Microsoft’s search engine, went down, the problem apparently spreading to the brand’s API, meaning services like DuckDuckGo also went down.

According to reports, the outage also affected ChatGPT and Ecosia. Despite Google’s dominance of the web search world, the Bing API has a number of high-profile clients.

In various reports about X, users reported that they were either greeted with a blank page or an HTTP 429 error code when trying to log in.

Users claimed that both Bing.com and DuckDuckGo were loading, but neither was producing search results when a query was entered.