The CrowdStrike outage caused havoc across a swathe of industries spanning the global economy.
Airlines, railways, hospitals, television stations, sports clubs and financial systems were among the sectors hit by the technology glitches, prompting national governments to convene emergency meetings and stock markets to fall.
The US’s Federal Aviation Administration shut down operations due to the outage. There were about 110,000 commercial flights scheduled worldwide on Friday. By 6am ET, nearly 1,400 of them had been cancelled, according to reports.
US airlines including Delta, United and American grounded flights because of communication problems, while airports descended into chaos and some tourists were hit with large charges for purchasing tickets for new flights after original plans were cancelled.
Some rail transportation was also hit, with the metro system in the US capital, Washington DC, experiencing delays. And New York City’s subway system agency, the MTA, said that “some MTA customer information systems are temporarily offline due to a worldwide technical outage”. It added that train and bus services were unaffected.
In the UK, Gatwick and Luton airports were among the hubs where airline check-in systems were hit, while the biggest commuter rail network, GTR, said its Thameslink and Southern trains were disrupted due to communications systems failing. South Western Railway said all of its ticket vending machines had stopped working, and West Midlands Trains, Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway and TransPennine Express were also affected.