Technical failures caused widespread disruption worldwide on Friday, affecting international air traffic, banks, and media outlets.
Berlin’s airport temporarily suspended all flight operations, and technical issues were also reported at Vienna Airport, where staff are processing check-ins for Wizz Air, Ryanair, Eurowings, and Turkish Airlines manually.
“This may result in significant delays for departures in Vienna,” an airport spokesperson said.
At Madrid Airport, hundreds of passengers were stranded, awaiting information about their flights. The operator Aena reported that a computer system malfunction had forced staff to process flights manually. Disruptions were also reported by Ryanair, US airlines including American Airlines and Delta Airlines, and the Swiss air traffic control service Skyguide.
No landings are possible at Zurich Airport, though flights already en route will still land.
The source of the problem has been identified as an issue with the US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike related to its antivirus software, Falcon. Writing on X (formerly Twitter), CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the outage was not caused by “a security incident or cyberattack.”
“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,” Kurtz wrote.
German airline Lufthansa and its subsidiary Eurowings were also impacted by the global technical issues. “Access to profiles and bookings is currently only partially possible,” stated Lufthansa’s website on Friday.
In the UK, the news channel Sky News was unable to broadcast. Australia’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank, reported that some customers might be unable to make transfers due to the service outage.
The global IT issues have also impacted hospitals across Austria. In Vorarlberg, Dornbirn City Hospital reported IT outages, which led to the postponement of planned surgeries. However, emergency surgeries continued as normal, according to a spokesperson. Disruptions were also reported in Tirol and Burgenland. Emergency services in Vienna, Lower Austria, Styria and Carinthia remained unaffected.
