A global cyber outage grounds flights and disrupts businesses.

On Friday, major U.S. airlines ordered ground stops due to communication issues, while other industries worldwide, including media, banking, and telecommunications, also experienced system outages disrupting their operations.

American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, and Allegiant Air grounded flights shortly after Microsoft announced it had resolved a cloud services outage affecting several low-cost carriers. It remains unclear if the decision to halt flights was related to the earlier Microsoft cloud outage.

In Australia, media companies, banks, and telecom firms also experienced outages. The Australian government indicated these issues might be linked to a problem at the global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. Downdetector, a website that tracks outages, reported disruptions at several banks and telecom companies.

When Reuters contacted Crowdstrike’s technical support, a recorded message acknowledged reports of crashes on Microsoft’s Windows operating system related to its Falcon sensor, but did not specifically mention Australia. According to a post on X by the office of Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator, Michelle McGuinness, there was no evidence to suggest that the outage was a cybersecurity incident.