Microsoft outage LIVE: Shoppers forced to use cash as tech meltdown leaves stores including Gail’s and Waitrose unable to take card payments – while Crowdstrike and Microsoft share prices plummet amid worldwide chaos

Tina and Luke Griffin from Tennessee in the U.S had been hoping to fly to Barcelona at 10.55am this morning as part of a 15,000 dollar, two-and-half week trip to Europe.

Tina, 47, a TV and radio host, said: ‘We don’t know what to do, do we stay and hope we can fly to Spain at some point or get back on the Gatwick Express and head back to London?

‘We have four children with us and it’s not very fun standing around an airport for hours on end not knowing if we are even going to get to travel today.

‘We flew into London from Nashville four days ago and we’re hoping to visit Barcelona and Portugal before heading back to London for few more days and flying home in a fortnight’s time.

‘But I don’t want to waste a day like this. Right now, people are cool and calm but give it a few more hours and tempers are going to be frayed and we don’t really want to be around for that.

‘We’ve not really moved since joining the queue four hours ago- it’s only gone down slightly when people have decided to leave and go home.’

According to aviation analysts Cirium, 52 flights have been cancelled departing from UK airports and a further 51 inbound flights have also been axed.

This comes as the latest global figure say nearly 1400 flights have been cancelled due to the IT issue, out of the 110,000 commercial flights scheduled for today.

NHS Blood and Transplant urged people to keep their blood donor appointments, saying it had been contacted by people wondering if they were going ahead.

NHS Blood and Transplant are calling on donors to book and keep appointments to donate blood to boost NHS resilience at this time.

There remains a particularly urgent need for O negative blood. Blood donation systems are not affected and we currently have a high number of appointments available at our donor centres in major towns and cities.

Elaine Bevan, a retired nurse from Southampton, has been waiting in line at Gatwick Airport for over two hours to check in for her 2pm flight to Orlando, Florida.

The 70-year-old booked the two-week trip with her family in November 2023 and said she will wait as long as necessary because the holiday has been booked for such a ‘long time’.

Ms Bevan said: ‘We’re all getting a bit tired. It took us ages to find the queue in the first place.’

Asked if she was prepared to wait until the evening for the flight, she said: ‘I think we have to. It’s been booked for a long time – since November last year.’

She asked: ‘In the world where IT is king, why does it not perform as it should?’

Marcello Jones is flying to Los Angeles where he studies law.

The 25-year-old from Cornwall said he ‘hopes’ to get his money back, but added: ‘We’ll see what happens. There is not much I can do. I just want to get on the plane.’

Most passengers at Gatwick remained in good spirits thanks to bottles of water being handed out and sufficient air conditioning within the airport.

Ceo of Crowdstrike George Kurtz has said he is ‘deeply sorry’ for the issues caused by the global IT outage.

Speaking to NBC he said that although the issue had now been remediated it ‘could take some time’ for the systems to fully recover.

Mr Kurtz said this process won’t happen automatically but they are working to ensure recovery happens as quickly as possible.

Melanie Pizzey, CEO and Founder of the Global Payroll Association said:

‘We’ve been contacted by numerous clients already today who have been unable to access their payroll software due to the Microsoft outage and others who have been urged to log out with immediate effect.

‘Depending on the length of this outage, it could have very serious implications for businesses across the nation, particularly those who process payroll on a weekly basis.’

Government business has not been affected by the global IT outage, No 10 has said after holding a Cobra meeting.

The meeting was held at official-level – rather than ministers – earlier this morning.

A No 10 spokeswoman told reporters: ‘We recognise the impact this is having on services and the Government is working closely with the respective sectors and industries on this issue, which is affecting services not only across the UK but also globally.

‘Officials have met in the Cobra unit on this this morning and of course are updating ministers regularly on this issue.’

Merecedes is working to ensure the global IT outage has no impact on today’s practice sessions at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Error messages were seen on their pitwall earlier with the team now looking to fix the issues.

Crowdstrike is an official partner of the Mercedes F1 team with the company involved in their trackside operations.

The first practice at the Hungaroring begins at 12.30pm today.

Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust has declared a critical incident amid the major IT outage.

A statement on its website said: ‘Royal Surrey has declared a critical incident due to external IT issues which are widely affecting services including ours. This issue has affected Varian, the IT system we use to deliver radiotherapy treatments.”

‘The trust said it had contacted patients who were due to have radiotherapy this morning to reschedule appointments.

‘We hope these systems will be up and running soon and will directly contact patients who are due to have radiotherapy appointments if we are unable to deliver their treatments. Please attend your appointments unless you have heard otherwise.’

Tesla and X boss Elon Musk has called the Microsoft outage the ‘biggest IT fail ever’ in a post on social media.

Musk was replying to an article on the issue that is affecting services worldwide.

Waitrose is now accepting contactless payments ‘largely as normal’ following issues this morning.

The supermarket confirmed that chip and pin and cash payments have remained largely unaffected – with contactless payments being the only method impacted.

John Lewis stores have not been affected by the IT issue.

Professor Kamila Hawthorne, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, said any form of IT outage ‘is a serious concern’.

‘Our members are telling us that today’s outage is causing considerable disruption to GP practice bookings and IT systems – practices using EMIS IT systems appear to be particularly affected.

‘Any form of disruption to our digital systems is a serious concern for GPs as it directly impacts on the care we can give to our patients. Outages like this affect our access to important clinical information about our patients, as well as our ability to book tests, make referrals, and inform the most appropriate treatment plan.’

Castleford Academy near Leeds has been forced to remain closed to pupils today, after it said it was experiencing ‘severe issues’ with its computer systems.

In a post on X the school said:

Due to a severe issue with the academy computer servers, the academy will be closed to all pupils today.

We apologise for the short notice.

This follows reports that a parent communication app, Schoolcomms, which serves thousands of schools is also reporting ‘issues’.

The number of worldwide flight cancellations due to the global IT outage has now risen to almost 1,400.

So far, 1390 have been cancelled, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.

Here is a breakdown per country from the statistics provided so far:

• US: 512
• Germany: 92
• India: 56
• Italy: 45
• Canada: 21

Anthony Albanese the Australian Prime Minister has activated the country’s emergency crisis protocols in the wake of the global outage.

The National Coordination Mechanism, which was first used in the pandemic, has been ‘activated’ to try and support the country through the IT failures.

Travellers wait in Terminal 1 for check-in at Hamburg Airport

Travellers wait at check-in counters at Berlin Airport

Chaos at Majorca Airport due to worldwide computer systems error

Hong Kong Express Airways passengers queue at counters

Industry body the Rail Delivery Group has said ‘most trains are still running” despite the effect of the IT outage.

A spokesperson said: ‘Train operators have been affected by ongoing global IT issues which may result in some short notice service changes and cancellations, also impacting real-time information screens and services at stations.

‘We are sorry for any customers experiencing disruption to their journeys today; staff are working hard to resolve the issues as soon as possible.

‘Most trains are still running across the country and rail staff will be able to provide the latest information to customers in person.’

Lance and Penny Spraggons said they have been waiting in a queue for over an hour.

The couple are flying to Paris to mark their 55th wedding anniversary by going on a cruise starting on the River Seine.

The queue to the check-in desk is a five minute walk away, Mr Spraggons said, and they haven’t moved since they arrived in line.

The 77-year-old remained cheerful however, saying: ‘We’re with a travel company, so one would hope that if there is an issue (we would be covered).’

Penny Spraggons, 78, said: ‘It’s a long way to stand when you’re this age.’

Mr Spraggons intervened: ‘The biggest problem is the lack of information. We got here and we didn’t know what was happening until we saw the queues.’

Whitehall crisis officials are co-ordinating the response to the major IT outage hitting airlines, train companies and banks.

The Cobra system that deals with matters of national emergency or major disruption has been fired up, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden said.

A No 10 spokeswoman later told reporters: ‘Officials have met in the Cobra unit on this this morning and of course are updating ministers regularly on this issue.’

Asked why Sir Keir Starmer did not chair Cobra – which deals with matters of national emergency or major disruption, the spokeswoman said the Prime Minister had been meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Cabinet on Friday morning, and that she was not aware of plans for a gathering of the committee with ministers present.

The spokeswoman also said she was not aware of any Whitehall departments being hit by the outage.

American Airlines has said it has ‘safely re-established’ services after experiencing technical issues this morning.

It was forced to issue a ‘global ground stop’ on all of their flights this morning, and have since ‘apologised to customers for the incovenience.’

Technology experts have said the disruption is at the scale expected from Y2K or the ‘Millennium Bug’, a computer programming shortcut that was forecast to cause chaos as the year changed from 1999 to 2000 but never materialised.

‘I don’t think it’s too early to call it: this will be the largest IT outage in history,’ said Troy Hunt, a prominent security consultant, in a social media post.

‘This is basically what we were all worried about with Y2K, except it’s actually happened this time.’

CBBC is back up and running after being down for hours following IT issues.

Along with Sky News they were the only major broadcasters to be affected by the persisting issues.

Sky is also back online however it still appears unable to use graphics.

South Western Railway’s customer facing systems have been affected by the global IT outage.

Some of its ticket machines and retail systems are currently down but customers are still able to buy tickets online or on the app.

Information boards were also displaying blank screens at some London stations this morning.

Zurich airport has been forced to close after flights were unable to take off due to the global tech outage.

It has said that it is not operating any services to the US, as other flight operations remain partially restricted with delays and canceled flights.

Flights on route to Zurich that are already in the air are still allowed to land.

One passenger at Belfast airport told Sky news it was like they had gone back to the ‘dark ages’.

After the airport was forced to use a pen and paper to offer passengers details on their flights.

Queues at Gatwick Airport have reached 50m long as staff start handing out bottled water to stranded passengers.

The airport has gone into meltdown following a global IT outage which is affecting the check in desks.

Heathrow has also been impacted with the airport reporting delays to flights this morning.

In a statement on social media, CrowdStrike said the global IT outage was ‘not a security incident or cyberattack’.

Adding that the problem had been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.

IT security firm Crowdstrike says it has identified the issue, isolated it and deployed a fix.

Crowdstrike’s CEO, George Kurtz, issued this statement.

Crowdstrike has issued a statement blaming a ‘content update’ for the global outage.

Crowdstrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.

Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. 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.

We further recommend organisations ensure they’re communicating with Crowdstrike representatives through official channels.

Our team is fully mobilised to ensure the security and stability of Crowdstrike customers.

In a statement, Microsoft said a resolution for Windows devices was ‘forthcoming’.

We are aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming.

Payments at Sainsbury’s, Iceland, Asda and Lidl are all currently unaffected by the global IT outage, the supermarkets have confirmed.

Visa, the banking giant, has claimed to be unaffected by the global tech outage affecting millions of people.

There is no indication of any impact on Visa’s ability to process payments from this issue.

Our systems are operating normally.

We are aware of reports of people being unable to make payments and are working with our financial institution clients to understand any impact on their services to cardholders and merchants.

Supermarket chain Waitrose has gone ‘cash only’ in some stores as its card machines have gone down.

A checkout worker at Kings Cross Station told customers: ‘It is cash only at the moment. The card machines are not working.’

A queue of around 30 people was seen snaking around the supermarket in the London station.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said there is ‘no impact’ to ‘critical infrastructure’ in the country.

In a message of calm on X he said he understood the ‘concern’ of his citizens.

I understand Australians are concerned about the outage that is unfolding globally and affecting a wide range of services.

There is no impact to critical infrastructure, government services or Triple-0 services at this stage.

According to aviation analytics firm, Cirium, has estimated that so far today 1078 flights have been cancelled around the world.

NHS England has issued an alert claiming that the ‘majorirty of GP practices’ in England have been affected by the global outage.

However, it adds that there is currently no known impact on 999 or emergency services.

Travel journalist Simon Calder told Sky News: ‘This is the biggest day for flights leaving the UK since 2019 – we needed everything to go right. Unfortunately, it hasn’t.’

Dutch airline KLM has said that its flight handling is currently ‘impossible’.

Although they are working to get things up and running again, it has been forced to ‘largely’ suspend operations.

Manchester United’s ticket release has been delayed until midday due to the global IT outage.

The football club’s website is also currently unavailable and will remain so until the issue is resolved.

Banks in Germany and South Africa have experienced difficulties this morning, according to reports.

German banks are facing disruptions amid reports of global outages, a spokesperson for the Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft finanical industry association said.

South Africa’s Capitec Bank’s has seen services restored after experiencing significant disruptions across all its banking channels due to the global downtime incident, it said.

People travelling to the border crossing in Folkstone today have been told to expect delays.

In a post on X it admitted that its services had also been affected by the global crash and longer check-in times were likely.

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) confirmed the IT outage is disrupting community pharmacies.

We’re aware that due to global IT outages that services in community pharmacies, including the accessing of prescriptions from GPs and medicine deliveries, are disrupted today.

We urge patients to be patient whilst visiting their pharmacy.

We’re urgently raising this issue with the NHS England.

Cyber security expert Dan Card, from BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said people ‘should remain calm’ while businesses respond to the global IT outage.

It looks like a bug to a regular security update, rather than any form of ‘mega cyber attack’, but this is still causing worldwide challenges and is likely to require a large number of people to take manual remedial steps.

Companies should make sure their IT teams are well supported as it could be a difficult and highly stressful weekend for them as they help customers.

People often forget the people that are running around fixing things.’

Passengers have been stranded at the check-in desks at Gatwick Airport as its IT systems have been affected by the global IT outage.

One traveller described the scene at the travel hub as ‘bedlam’ with staff now handing out water to those stranded.

Dean Seddon started queuing at 6am to check in for a trip with his social media training company to Miami, Florida, ahead of their scheduled departure at 10am with Norse Atlantic Airways.

‘There are just people everywhere, there must be 400 people in this queue for the check in desk I’m at… it’s just bedlam,” the 42-year-old from Plymouth said.

‘It’s one of those things where you kind of know we’re not going to fly, but you don’t want to leave because you don’t know.

‘(Staff are) doing the best they can but they don’t actually know when it’s going to be fixed, so it is frustrating, but you kind of feel for the staff as well.’

The Liberal Democrats have urged the Government to convene a meeting of the Cobra emergency committee to co-ordinate an urgent response to the major IT outage.

The party’s Cabinet Office spokesperson Christine Jardine said:

The Government must call an urgent Cobra meeting to address the chaos being caused by these IT outages across the country.

The public needs to be reassured that the disruption to their travel or their desperately needed GP appointments will be minimised.

Getting critical infrastructure up and running again must be priority number one. The National Cyber Security Centre should also be working with small businesses and other organisations to help them deal with the outage.

This once again lays bare the need to improve our digital infrastructure and truly modernise our economy in order to prevent the incidents from happening again.

Passengers in India have been given hand-written boarding passes as they struggle with the ongoing IT problems.

While at Dehli airport’s terminal 3, a man stands next to a white board updating the departure times manually for passengers.

Heathrow Airport has been affected by the global IT outage with flights being delayed.

A spokesperson said: ‘Flights are operational but we are experiencing delays.

‘We are implementing contingency plans to minimise any impact on journeys.

‘Passengers are advised to check with their airline for the latest flight information.’

The organising committee for the Paris Olympics says its IT operations have also been impacted.

However, with just a week to go until the lavish boat procession down the River Seine, officials have said they have a ‘contingency plan in place’, according to Reuters news agency.

CBBC, the BBC’s TV channel for children, has been down since this morning.

A message that reads ‘Sorry! Something’s gone wrong’ is popping up instead of the usual content.

The broadcaster has said CBBC is its only channel affected with CBeebies and BBC One still on air.

Two hospitals in the cities of Luebeck and Kiel have been forced to cancel elective operations scheduled for today.

However, they claimed that patient care and emergency services will go ahead as normal.

American Airlines, which is the world’s biggest by passenger numbers, was forced to ground all its flight earlier today due to IT problems.

It has now blamed the US firm Crowdstrike as the source of the issue saying it is because of ‘technical issues with Crowdstrike that is impacting multiple carriers’.

The airline says its working with the IT security firm to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

Poland’s largest container terminal, the Baltic Hub, has issued a statement to say it is ‘stuggling’ following the latest IT issues.

It has been forced to ask companies to not send containers to the port, which usually handles up to 2.9 million containers per year.

Pleased be advised that we are struggling at the Baltic Hub with a global Microsoft operating system outage that is hampering terminal operations.

A GP practice in Oxfordshire has asked patients with ‘routine concerns’ to wait until Monday amid an IT outage.

Writing on X, Windrush Medical Practice in Witney, said: ‘There is a nationwide outage of our booking system EMIS.

‘We’re continuing as normal for urgent enquiries but ask for routine concerns to wait until Monday.

‘Please continue to submit your queries through Engage Consult. Thank you.’

Train service information website National Rail Enquiries said there are ‘widespread IT issues across the entire network’.

Among the operators affected are Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway, Southern and Thameslink.

National Rail Enquiries told passengers:

There are currently widespread IT issues across the entire network.

IT teams are actively investigating to determine the root cause of the problem.

As a result, some train operators are unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-notice train cancellations.

Additionally, other key systems, including real-time customer information platforms, are also affected.

Luton Airport said that a global IT outage is affecting some airlines and operations are continuing with manual systems.

On X, formerly Twitter, the airport posted:

We are aware of an ongoing global IT issue that is impacting check-in and boarding procedures for some airlines.

We have additional staff on hand to support and operations are continuing with manual systems.

Passengers are advised to check with their airlines for flight updates.

Owen Sayers, IT security advisor and former IT security consultant to the Home Office and Ministry of Justice has said:

This is what happens when the infrastructure that’s too big to fail, fails.

Today’s global outage of Microsoft is rapidly sending shockwaves across all sectors and shows once again – if proof were needed – that putting all our eggs into one huge world-spanning basket might not have been a good idea.

The irony of this is that the failure might not – this time – even be Microsoft’s fault, but is related to a Crowdstrike security update.

That a protective measure gone wrong has brought such instant chaos to so many countries and industry sectors might surprise many people, but the reality is that public Cloud infrastructure is both complex and surprisingly fragile.

The concern for UK citizens is that over the past 10 years the UK Government have moved core services directly on to these platforms.
Police, 999 services, health and the fabric of our society all sit on these Cloud, that were never designed for that use – but the purveyors of which were all too happy to allow to onboard.

The length of the outage and exact details of its cause and how to rectify it is still unclear – but one thing is for sure . We’re exposed like we’ve never been before and this is a heads up we’d be wise to pay attention to.

Barcodes on boarding passes at Gatwick airport are reportedly not working, leading attendate to have to check the tickets manually.

However, a BBC reporter has said that airport security is operating as normal.

Even football clubs have been affected, with  telling fans that its ticketing platform was malfunctioning.

New Zealand parliament has reported that their computer network is having problems.

The Metropolitan Police says it has not been affected by this morning’s IT issues and currently all systems are operating normally.

Customers at Australian supermarkets have been unable to buy their groceries at the checkouts as IT issues persist.

Bristol Water said it is experiencing company wide IT issues but the billing department remains operating.

On X, formerly Twitter, the company posted:

Please be aware we are experiencing company wide IT Issues – we are still able to take emergency calls at this time.

At the moment the billing department remain operating as usual.

Sorry for any inconvenience, we are working on getting back to normal as soon as possible.

Japan’s Narita airport, around 60km (37miles) from Tokyo, says airlines JetStar, Jeju Air, Qantas, HK Express and Spring Japan are having issues with their systems.

And in India, Delhi airport says some services have been temporarily impacted.

While in Berlin the airport posted on X that it is experiencing delays to check-ins due to a ‘technical fault’.

Sky News has just come back on air, after being offline for three hours.

Sky Sports Presenter Jacquie Beltrao has posted earlier on X saying: ‘We’re obviously not on air – we’re trying @SkyNews Breakfast.’

In the UK, bakery and coffee shop chain Gail’s is reporting problems.

A sign outside the window of its Swain’s Lane shop in London says it is unable to take in-store payments.

Users on social media have also reported being unable to make payments at other Gail’s outlets.

GP surgeries across the UK have been hit by the outages, as they claim the issue will will ‘have a big effect’.

The Wilmslow Health Centre in Cheshire wrote on X:

All practices in the UK using the NHS commissioned GP computer system EMIS are currently without access to their IT systems.

This is beyond the control of GP surgeries. Please bear with us until we have our IT systems back online.

Central Lakes Medical Group in Ambleside wrote on X:

We’re impacted by the IT outage.

This will have a big effect on us, so apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused, and delays on the phone.

Another post by Pocklington Group Practice in the East Riding of Yorkshire said:

Due to ongoing Windows issues affecting IT worldwide, the practice is currently unable to function as normal.

This may result in appointments needing to be cancelled and rearranged. Updates will follow when available.”

While Solihull Healthcare Partnership in the West Midlands said there is a ‘national issue’ with EMIS Web, the clinical computer system.

Unfortunately there is a national issue with EMIS Web – our clinical computer system.

This will affect our ability to book/consult with patients this morning.

We will update patients when we can. We apologise for the disruption.

NHS England has been contacted for comment.

The London Stock Exchange is reportedly als experiencing technical glitches, after Microsoft reported an outage across its online services.

It said on its website this morning:

RNS news service is currently experiencing a 3rd party global technical issue, preventing news from being published on www.londonstockexchange.com.

Technical teams are working to restore the service. Other services across the Group, including London Stock Exchange, continue to operate as normal.

Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern – all four of Govia Thameslink Railway’s brands – said they were experiencing problems but were ‘actively investigating’ the issue.

It continued: ‘We are unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-notice cancellations, particularly on the Thameslink and Great Northern networks.

‘Additionally, other key systems, including our real-time customer information platforms, are also affected.

‘We will provide additional updates when we can. In the meantime, please regularly check your journey before you travel.’

United, Delta and American Airlines have issued a ‘global ground stop’ on all of their flights.

Flights that are currently airborne will continue, but no further flights will take off for now.

Sky News has apologised for the disruption to its live broadcast on Friday morning, saying: We are working hard to restore all services.’

A Sky News spokesperson said in a statement:

Sky News has not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, we apologise for the interruption.

All the news is still available online, on the Sky News app, website, and across our social media accounts.

We are working hard to restore all services.

Passengers arriving at Gatwick airport have been faced with mammoth queues as IT system go down.

Edinburgh Airport’s automated boarding scanners have been the latest tech to go down following the global Microsoft issue.

One witness has reported that the Airport was checking boarding passes manually.

on top of this departure boards in the main terminal building appeared to freeze, showing out-of-date information about gate numbers and take off times – meaning some passengers have missed their flights.

Edinburgh airport spokesperson said passenger should expect longer waiting times.

An IT system outage means wait times are longer than usual at the airport.

This outage is affecting many other businesses, including airports.

Work is ongoing to resolve this and our teams are on hand to assist where we can. Passengers are thanked for their patience.