Airlines, hospitals, banks and scores of other businesses and services began slowly to recover on Friday from severe disruptions caused by a global technology outage. But issues continued to cascade throughout the day, affecting package delivery, hospitals, courthouses and various other sectors worldwide.
The outage was attributed to a software update issued by CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm whose software is used by myriad industries around the world.The disruption, which reached what some experts called “historic” proportions, was a stunning example of the global economy’s fragile dependence on certain software, and the cascading effect it can have when things go wrong.
A software update issued by CrowdStrike resulted in crashes of machines running the Microsoft Windows operating system. George Kurtz, the company’s CEO, said it was not a security incident or cyberattack. He said a fix had been sent out, but warned it could take some time to implement. “We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused,” he said.

Early on Friday, major US airlines – American Airlines , Delta Air Lines and United Airlines – grounded flights, while other carriers and airports around the world reported delays and disruptions. Banks and financial services companies from Australia to India and Germany warned customers of disruptions and traders across markets spoke of problems executing transactions.
“We are having the mother of all global market outages,” one trader said.
In Britain, booking systems used by doctors were offline, multiple reports posted on X by medical officials said, while Sky News, one of the country’s major news broadcasters, was taken off air.
Soccer club Manchester United said it had to postpone a scheduled release of tickets.
Airports from Los Angeles to Singapore, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and Berlin said some airlines were having to check in passengers manually, causing delays. Govt agencies were also affected with the Dutch and UAE’s foreign ministries reporting some disruptions.
But even as companies and institutions began restoring services, experts said the outage revealed the risks of an increasingly online world. “This is a very, very uncomfortable illustration of the fragility of the world’s core Internet infrastructure,” said Ciaran Martin, ex-head of UK’s national cyber security centre. NYT & Reuters