LAST UPDATE | 19 Jul

[NOTE: YOU CAN FOLLOW OUR LATEST COVERAGE ON THE GLOBAL IT OUTAGE IN OUR LIVEBLOG HERE. THIS ARTICLE IS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED]

A LARGE-SCALE OUTAGE has been wreaking havoc on IT systems across the world this morning, with broadcasters and websites being taken offline.

Websites including ABC News and Ryanair are down as Microsoft confirmed that it is investigating. All Spanish airports, three Indian airlines, and the Netherlands’ airport Schiphol have reported being significantly impacted by the outage.

We're investigating an issue impacting users ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services. More info posted in the admin center under MO821132 and on https://t.co/W5Y8dAkjMk

— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) July 18, 2024

Sky News, which had been down earlier this morning, has since been restored. 

“Potential disruptions across the network (Fri 19 July) due to a global 3rd party system outage,” Ryanair said on its website.

“Affected passengers will be notified and any passengers travelling across the network on Fri 19 July should check their Ryanair app for the latest updates on their flight. We advise passengers to arrive at the airport 3 hours in advance of their flight to avoid any disruptions.

“We regret any inconvenience caused to passengers by this 3rd party IT issue, which is outside of Ryanair’s control and affects all airlines operating across the network,” it said.

In a message shared on X, TFI apologised for inconvenience caused this morning to customers unable to use TFI Live and TFI Leap Top-up mobile apps.

“There is a global outage affecting multiple countries at the moment. We don’t have an estimated resolution time,” it said.

Major US carriers including American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines issued ground stops this morning citing communication issues. Low-cost carriers Frontier Airlines, Allegiant and SunCountry had earlier reported outages that affected operations, Reuters reported.

Flights have been suspended at Berlin Brandenburg airport in Germany due to a “technical problem”, a spokeswoman told media outlet AFP.

“There are delays to check-in and flight operations had to be cancelled until 10:00 am (0800 GMT),” the spokeswoman said, adding however that she could not say when they would resume.

The DAA has said that are currently no widespread issues at Dublin Airport.

Executive Chairman of the Sky News Group, David Rhodes, said in a post on X that Sky was working to restore all services.

.@SkyNews have not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, currently telling viewers that we apologise for the interruption. Much of our news report is still available online, and we are working hard to restore all services.

— David Rhodes (@davidgrayrhodes) July 19, 2024

The UK’s largest rail franchise is facing “widespread IT issues”, its four train lines said, warning of possible cancellations.

“We are currently experiencing widespread IT issues across our entire network”, the four lines operated by Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) posted on X.

Australian companies reported being hit by a “large-scale technical outage”, the country’s top cyber-security authority said, with national broadcaster ABC reporting that its operations had been affected. Its largest international airport, and a major telecommunications company are also reporting issues.

“Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies,” the office of Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator said in a statement.

National broadcaster ABC said its systems had been crippled by a “major” glitch.

Photos posted online showed large queues forming at Sydney Airport, which told AFP some airline operations and terminal services had been affected.

Some self-checkout terminals at one of the country’s largest supermarket chains displayed error messages.

Telecommunications firm Telstra also said some of its systems had been disrupted.

Includes reporting by AFP.