From rail to retail: How the CrowdStrike outage caused chaos across industries

The CrowdStrike outage has caused chaos across numerous sectors of the global economy.

The technical disruptions affected airlines, railways, hospitals, television stations, sports clubs and the financial sector, among others. Governments in individual countries had to call emergency meetings and stock markets crashed.

Travel

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suspended operations due to the outage. About 110,000 commercial flights were scheduled worldwide on Friday. Nearly 1,400 of these had reportedly been canceled by 6 a.m. ET.

US airlines such as Delta, United and American grounded their flights due to communication problems, there was chaos at airports and some tourists had to pay high fees. for purchasing tickets for new flights after original plans were cancelled.

Some rail services were also affected. For example, there were delays in the subway system in the US capital Washington DC. And the New York subway authority MTA announced that “some MTA customer information systems are temporarily offline due to a global technical outage.” It added that train and bus services were not affected.

In the UK, Gatwick and Luton airports were among the hubs where airline check-in systems were affected, while GTR, the largest local transport operator, said Thameslink and Southern trains were unable to operate due to communications failures. South Western Railway said all ticket machines had stopped working. West Midlands Trains, Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway and TransPennine Express were also affected.

Health

In countries such as the UK, Germany and Israel, patients have had to cancel important hospital appointments at the last minute. The Royal Surrey NHS Trust in the south of England, for example, declared a critical incident and cancelled radiotherapy appointments scheduled for Friday morning.

Doctors’ surgeries in the UK said they were unable to access patient records or book appointments as people reported on social media that they were unable to access online systems. NHS hospitals and emergency services are not believed to be affected by the outage.

Some hospitals in Germany and the Netherlands canceled surgeries, while others in Israel and the United States reported also encountering problems, often involving access to electronic patient records.

In the US, 911 emergency numbers were down in parts of Alaska and authorities posted alternative phone numbers on social media. Similar problems were reported in other states, including New Hampshire and Ohio.

Financial systems

The system failure put people at risk of losing their weekly and monthly wages as payroll systems collapsed.

Melanie Pizzey, Executive Director of the Global Payroll Association, says: “We have already been contacted today by numerous customers who have been unable to access their payroll software due to the Microsoft outage, and others have been advised to opt out with immediate effect.

“Depending on how long this outage lasts, it could have very serious consequences for businesses, especially those that process payroll on a weekly basis. In addition, there could be a backlog in processing payroll for the coming month-end, which could result in employees receiving their monthly wages later.”

In the financial sector, Metro Bank reported problems with its phone lines in the UK and Santander said card payments could be “impacted”. Employees at US bank JP Morgan were unable to log into their systems and the London Stock Exchange said there were problems with its messaging service.

Bloomberg TV reported that the station was aware of hedge funds that were unable to complete certain trades and that “some people had to go home.”

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retail trade

Retail payment systems were also apparently affected by the system failure: some shop owners in the UK put up signs saying “Cash only”.

A spokesman for British supermarket Morrisons said there had been some “isolated incidents” with the payment systems during the morning, but these were later resolved and the systems were functioning normally again.

Rival Waitrose said it was accepting contactless payments largely as normal and was still processing chip and PIN payments and cash. A spokesperson for the supermarket said it had been able to accept card payments throughout the day but “contactless payments were briefly restricted”.

According to customer reports, payment systems in some branches of the B&Q hardware store were also affected.

Sports

There have been reports of problems from France, where the Olympic Games begin next week.

The Games organisers said: “Paris 2024 technical teams are fully mobilised to contain the impact and we have activated our contingency plans to ensure the continuity of our operations.”

Some football clubs also warned that their ticketing systems were under pressure. Reigning Scottish champions Celtic, for example, announced that they would postpone ticket sales. In England, Manchester United followed suit.

Several French television stations are said to have experienced technical problems, for example with the display of graphics and weather maps.

In the UK, too, the channels Sky News and CBBC were temporarily taken off the air before resuming broadcasting.

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