By News Editor 
Worldwide Outage of Major IT Systems Impacts Airlines, Banks; Sparks Global Disruption
A global IT disruption emanating from a Microsoft outage has triggered havoc worldwide, stalling numerous industries and services. Among others, the principal victims of this cyber meltdown are the aviation and banking sectors, according to Sky News, with travelers facing widespread disruptions.
IT Outage Hits Global Business
An erroneous update release has been cited as the principal cause of the major Microsoft failure that resulted in disrupted services worldwide. The flawed update resulted in multiple reportage of “Blue Screen of Death” incidents, forcing the tech giant into swift action to revert the changes. As affected organizations scrambled to restore normal services, the sudden breakdown spotlights the fragile nature of global digital dependencies in today’s connected world. A tweet by “Dreamlife” reported businesses relying on cyber security solutions offered by CrowdStrike/Microsoft being majorly affected.
The plea is for fast restorations as the dual effect hits the business side of those organizations.
Global Impact on Airlines
The aviation industry, one of the most afflicted by this disruption, faced considerable challenges during the global ground stop. Passenger flights from several airlines were either delayed or outright cancelled due to the broad global outage. WTNH’s live updates covered the unfolding chaos that resulted in significant travel delays. Particularly hard-hit were sections of the United States, with hundreds of flights either stalled or called off due to the rapidly spreading outage. Air India issued a customer advisory notifying that its digital systems had been temporarily thrown out of gear due to the Microsoft outage, resulting in delays.
Similarly, the Mumbai Airport’s check-in system was down for airlines such as IndiGo, Akasa Air, and SpiceJet due to the global outage. Effect on Banks and Other Sectors Banks also came into the spectrum of the worldwide outage, their services disrupted alongside other pivotal sectors. Customers were caught out unexpectedly, with some being unable to execute payments due to bank systems being caught up in the outage. The Sky News tweet regarding the global IT outage underlined the widespread scale of the problem and its far-reaching impacts.
The scale of the Microsoft IT outage is huge.#BBCBreakfast pic.twitter.com/OOmeZNlhCh
— Haggis_UK 🇬🇧 🇪🇺 (@Haggis_UK) July 19, 2024
Ironically though, the inconvenience of the moment did evoke some humor on Twitter, with one individual joking about the possibility of Meta (formerly Facebook) going down, thereby boosting global productivity. Another tweet shows an Infosys employee looking pleased at gaining an unscheduled long weekend due to the Microsoft outage.
The Microsoft / CrowdStrike outage has taken down most airports in India. I got my first hand-written boarding pass today 😅 pic.twitter.com/xsdnq1Pgjr
— Akshay Kothari (@akothari) July 19, 2024