Dutch airline, KLM said that a global computer outage has made “flight handling impossible” and is largely suspending its operations.
Airlines and airports around the globe have been affected by IT problems.
“KLM and other airlines and airports have been affected by a global computer outage, making flight handling impossible,” the airline said in a statement.
“We realize that this is very inconvenient for our customers and staff, particularly in the midst of the summer holiday season.
“We’re working hard to resolve the problem. Until then, we will have to suspend operations largely.”
In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration has stopped flights by major airlines United, American and Delta.
German airports in Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Cologne-Bonn and Nuremberg reported various degrees of service disruptions.
Outage halts traffic at Berlin airport, Hamburg hit by disruptions
No planes were taking off or landing at Berlin’s airport, while some departures were affected in Hamburg on Friday morning, due to IT outages.
Similar failures were being reported across the world, affecting airlines and airports, media outlets, banks and telecommunication companies in countries including Spain, Australia, India and Britain.
In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration has reportedly stopped flights by major airlines United, American and Delta.
The European budget airlines Ryanair said it has also had its operations disrupted.
A spokeswoman for Berlin Brandenburg Airport said there “are delays in handling due to a technical fault’’ and that flight operations would be suspended until 10 a.m. (0800 GMT).
Local broadcaster RBB reported there was a server failure, but the spokeswoman would not confirm this.
At Hamburg Airport, four airlines were suffering from tech failures at
A spokeswoman said the airlines were Eurowings, Ryanair, Vueling and Turkish airlines.
She said the airlines were issuing tickets manually.
French TV channels affected by worldwide tech outages
Several television channels in France have also been affected by a major computer outage wreaking technical havoc worldwide.
Canal+, a French TV station has informed its subscribers that it is suffering from the effects of an IT breakdown that is preventing the broadcast of its regular programmes.
The television channel TF1 has also been hit. A French presenter said during the programme that the channel could not broadcast everything as usual.
For instance, no maps for the weather report could be shown.
Development traced to Microsoft
Meanwhile, the development has been traced to Virtual Machines running on Microsoft Windows that are running the CrowdStrike Falcon agent.
Microsoft said it is aware of the issue and that though it is an external dependency, it is currently being investigated.
“We experienced a Storage incident in Central US which had downstream impact to a number of Azure services.
“This is currently mitigated, however we are still in the process of validating recovery to a small percentage of those downstream services.
“This was communicated to affected customers via the Service Health dashboard in the Azure portal.
“We are also aware of an issue impacting Virtual Machines running Windows, running the CrowdStrike Falcon agent, which may encounter a bug check (BSOD) and get stuck in a restarting state.
“While this is an external dependency, we are currently investigating potential options for Azure customers to mitigate and will be providing updates via the status page here: azure.status.microsoft/en-gb/status/ as well as our Azure portal, where possible,” Microsoft stated.
Meanwhile, according to George Kurtz, President & CEO of CrowdStrike, the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.
“We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.
“We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels.
“Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers,” Kurtz stated.