The global outage caused chaos at major Australian airports on Friday evening as check-in computers and departure boards froze.
Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin were all affected by the outage, as were major banks, retailers and media and entertainment companies.
The catastrophic global outage was caused by a ‘bad’ update to the Crowdstrike antivirus technology on Microsoft computers, which caused the ‘blue screen of death’ screen to appear.
Some Qantas passengers were even told to ‘google’ as their flight departed in a desperate attempt to resolve the problem because the departure boards were not working.
“Qantas is telling passengers to Google their flight to find out when it departs and which gate as everything is down,” one passenger wrote on X.
Sydney Airport said it had activated its “contingency plans” and deployed extra staff to the terminals.
“If you are travelling today, please ensure you arrive at the airport in plenty of time and check with your airline regarding the status of your flight,” a spokesperson said.
Melbourne Airport reports a global technology issue affecting check-in procedures for some airlines.
‘Passengers flying with these airlines this afternoon are advised to allow a little more time to check in. Please contact your airline for flight updates.’
Computer screens showing flight departure and arrival times at Sydney Airport instead show the ‘blue screen of death’ (see image)
A Qantas spokesperson confirmed the airline is experiencing system issues as a result of the outage.
The spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia they are working with their providers to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Another X user reported that Jetstar’s computer systems were also down at Sydney Airport, with the airline announcing that they were ‘unable to check in or board passengers’.
A later statement from Virgin revealed that the airline had “no ability to obtain flight plans”.
A Virgin spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the airline was “striving to resolve this issue as quickly as possible”.
“We appreciate all travelers’ patience as we work toward a resolution. We will provide an update as more information becomes available,” the spokesperson said.
A Jetstar spokesman said the company was also “affected by a global software issue impacting airlines and other businesses around the world”.
“We are working with our providers to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” the spokesperson said.
The outage is having serious consequences for airlines in the United States. Microsoft said it first experienced the outage around 6:00 p.m. ET (8:00 a.m. AEST) on Thursday, Reuters reports.
A passenger on US airline Delta said he was not allowed to board the plane despite “the crew and the people being ready”.
A global technical outage shut down computers that check in passengers at major Australian airlines and airports on Friday afternoon (stock image)
Another Delta passenger said they were “on a crowded plane going nowhere.”
Cyber expert Troy Hunt told Seven News the catastrophic crisis did not affect all Microsoft Windows computers, but it did affect many.
Mr. Hunt explained that CrowdStrike makes antivirus products that are regularly updated with new virus definitions.
‘They operate in a very privileged space on the PC, which means they have a lot of control.
“It looks like they released a bad update, which is currently blocking all machines using the update.”
‘It may take some time before the machines are back on time’.
