The fallout from the ‘most serious IT outage the world has ever seen’ continues to impact Britain and beyond tonight, grounding planes and trains, disrupting the NHS, closing shops, preventing football teams from selling tickets, and knocking banking platforms offline.
A faulty update pushed out by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused Windows computers to suddenly shut down, prompting departure boards at major airports like Heathrow, Gatwick, and Edinburgh to immediately turn off on the busiest day for British airports since Covid.
While the problem has been identified and a fix is gradually being implemented, the knock-on effects for travellers and patients continue as systems come back online.
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15:52 – CrowdStrike’s CEO Withdraws from Sports Car Race CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has withdrawn his car from a professional sports car race in America this weekend. Kurtz, who co-founded the company in 2011 and owns a five per cent stake, also drives for the CrowdStrike Racing team in the Fanatec GT Challenge America series. Sportscar365 reports the team has withdrawn from an event at Virginia International Raceway this weekend. A stewards’ note confirmed the car had been withdrawn ‘at the request of the competitor.’
15:39 – Number of Flights Cancelled Worldwide Tops 5,000 More than 5,000 flights were cancelled across the world because of the CrowdStrike error, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. Figures suggest 5,078 flights – 4.6% of those scheduled – were cancelled due to the errors. Of those, 167 departures and 171 arrivals in the UK were affected.
15:16 – CrowdStrike Boss Sees His £3.4bn Fortune Plummet by £100k and £9bn Wiped Off His Firm The grievous error wiped £9billion from CrowdStrike’s value and $320million (£247m) from Mr. Kurtz’s personal wealth; he owns a five per cent stake in the firm and the dip represents a loss of a tenth of his $3.4billion net worth.
14:33 – New York City Billboards Go Blank Images show billboards in New York going blank as the global IT outage continues. Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, said a ‘handful’ of billboards in the area remained offline earlier on Friday, AP reported.
14:02 – Passengers Queue in Airports Worldwide Photos from Brussels, Phoenix, Dusseldorf, and Gatwick show long lines of passengers waiting due to delayed flights caused by the CrowdStrike update error.
13:50 – Gatwick: Most Flights Should ‘Operate as Usual’ Tomorrow Gatwick’s IT systems are now operating as usual, and the airport expects the ‘majority’ of flights to go ahead as normal tomorrow. Some delays and cancellations will continue this evening and over the weekend.
12:59 – Two-Thirds of Brits Ditch Cash for Cards or Phone Payments Two-thirds (66%) of adults use debit or credit cards for all their everyday purchases, according to research by Lopay.
12:48 – More than 4,000 Flights Cancelled Worldwide As many as 4,295 flights worldwide have been cancelled so far today due to the IT outage.
11:55 – London Ambulance Service Sees ‘Huge Increases’ in Calls London Ambulance Service Chief Executive Daniel Elkeles said the global IT outage has led to a third more 999 and 111 calls than usual, with more than 3,000 calls to each service by 2 pm.
11:53 – Disruption Eases for Some UK Airports Heathrow said flights are departing and arriving smoothly, but longer than usual queues remain at Stansted, Manchester, and Gatwick.
11:31 – Health Secretary Wes Streeting Advises Patients to ‘Continue to Access NHS Services as Normal’ Streeting urged patients to continue to access services as normal and to bear with NHS staff.
10:45 – GPs Ask Patients to ‘Bear With Us’ Amid NHS IT Meltdown A GP has asked patients to bear with them as the NHS faces IT issues affecting appointment bookings and patient records.
10:42 – ‘WFH Will Make Recovery from IT Meltdown Harder’ Computer experts warn that working from home will complicate recovery efforts from the IT outage.
10:24 – CrowdStrike Customers Remain ‘Fully Protected’ CrowdStrike’s CEO stated that the firm’s customers remain fully protected and emphasized that the issue was an outage, not a cyber-security incident.
10:12 – Number of Cancelled Flights Soars to 3,300 The number of flights cancelled worldwide due to the IT outage has risen to 3,340.
10:01 – Microsoft Advises Turning Computers Off and On Again… 15 Times Microsoft suggested rebooting computers 15 times as a potential fix.
09:52 – Increased Demand on 999 Services South Central Ambulance Service reported increased demand on its 999 and NHS 111 services due to global IT issues.
09:09 – What is CrowdStrike, and Could a Cyberattack Be Responsible? CrowdStrike is a security service designed to prevent internet breaches for global companies but is now responsible for perhaps the biggest IT outage ever seen. Analysts believe a faulty update caused the issue.
09:08 – Two Thousand People Waiting to Check-In at Stansted Airport Rafa de Miguel described waiting in a three-hour queue with more than 2,000 people at Stansted Airport. Staff had to write out boarding passes and luggage tags by hand due to the IT system being down.
