Jetstar was forced to cancel all its flights in Australia and New Zealand on Friday night, impacting thousands of customers about to fly out for the weekend. Overseas, the global crash forced American Airlines, United and Delta to ask the Federal Aviation Administration ground stop on all flights just after 5pm AEST.
In India, airlines were forced to issue handwritten boarding passes. In Europe, Berlin Airport cancelled all flights, while Heathrow suspended all flights to the United States. Travellers out of London’s biggest airport reported being unable to buy food as payment systems went offline.
The scenes were mirrored across Woolworths and Coles supermarkets in Australia as payment services failed and terminals shut down.
The outage was caused by a fault in the “Falcon sensor” used by US-based cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike. The sensor is installed on many business computers to gather security data. The fault had a major impact on Microsoft systems worldwide.
Late on Friday, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologised for the software update that caused chaos around the globe.
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“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this,” Kurtz told the Today Show in the US.
Kurtz said CrowdStrike has identified the bug and remediated the issue.
“Now we are working with each and every customer, to make sure that we can bring them back online,” he said.
“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.”
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said CrowdStrike had attended the federal government’s emergency meeting and had issued a fix for companies to reboot their systems.
“The company has informed us that most issues should be resolved through the fix they have provided, but given the size and nature of this incident it may take some time to resolve,” she said.
Transport, payment services impacted
In NSW, trains were cancelled on the Hunter Line between Newcastle and Dungog for safety reasons.
“Passengers are advised to delay their trips and make alternative travel arrangements,” a NSW transport spokesperson said. “There are no impacts to other modes of public transport and no impacts to the wider Sydney Trains network.”
In Victoria, payment services failed on trams in Melbourne, one of many transaction systems that collapsed, including at Woolworths and Coles.
ANZ’s internet banking also reported an “industry-wide issue” affecting the processing of some payments, but traditional transfers via BSB and bank account numbers are not impacted.
The Commonwealth Bank said its PayID services were unavailable.
Australia’s largest telecommunications provider, Telstra, said some of its systems had been impacted by the outage.
“The issue is causing some holdups for some of our customers, and we thank them for their patience,” Telstra said. “There is no impact to our fixed or mobile network which continue to operate.”
No evidence to suggest a hack
National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said there was no evidence to suggest the mass outage was a hack or cybersecurity incident.
“I am aware of a large-scale technical outage affecting a number of companies and services across Australia this afternoon,” McGuinness said in a statement on X.
“There is no information to suggest it is a cybersecurity incident. We continue to engage across key stakeholders.”
Richard Buckland, a professor in cybercrime at the School of Computer Science and Engineering UNSW said the crash was a worst-case scenario.
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“This is more serious than a cyberattack, really, because it shows our systems aren’t even proofed against randomness,” he told the ABC.
Airports impacted by incident
The outage has caused the grounding and cancellation of flights across the United States. Delays swept across Sydney’s airport, hitting check-ins during the peak Friday travel rush.
“A global technical outage has impacted some airline operations and terminal services,” an airport spokesperson said.
“Flights are currently arriving and departing however there may be some delays throughout the evening. We have activated our contingency plans with our airline partners and deployed additional staff to our terminals to assist passengers.”
Long queues at Sydney domestic airport on Friday afternoon. Credit: Ben Grubb
Just after 9pm Jetstar announced it had cancelled all its flights in Australia and New Zealand until 2am on Saturday.
“Our teams are working on recovery options and we will contact customers with updates as soon as our systems are back online,” a spokesperson said.
Jetstar said customers due to travel on Friday or Saturday could rebook or refund their flight.
Virgin Australia grounded its flights at 5pm but resumed boarding an hour later.
“Virgin Australia operations are continuing following a large-scale IT outage impacting multiple airlines and other businesses, however some cancellations and delays are expected,” a spokesperson said.
AFL fans were locked out of Marvel Stadium on Friday night an hour before kick-off. TAB was also forced to suspend all betting services.
The outage caused upheaval in the media industry, impacting newspapers, radio and TV around the world. Britain’s Sky News, one of the country’s major television news channels, was forced off air.
Autocues failed in TV newsrooms across Australia, forcing presenters to improvise for hours. Triple J radio hosts had to rely on CDs and USB sticks to play music to listeners as their systems went down.
With Anthony Segaert, Ben Grubb, Lachlan Abbott and David Crowe