Mass IT outage hits airports, businesses and broadcasters around the world

Major airlines, media organizations and businesses around the world were affected by a massive IT glitch caused by a problem with Microsoft cloud computing services early Friday.

Flights were grounded in several countries and stores and broadcasters in several countries were offline after the outage which appeared to be affecting Windows PCs.

Microsoft said the problem with its Azure Service and Microsoft 365 apps, including services such as the videoconferencing app Teams, was fixed early Friday, but companies across the U.S. and Europe were still reporting problems.

The company said “a small subset of services is still experiencing residual impact.”

Carriers including American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines all issued ground stops on Friday morning citing communication issues, less than an hour after Microsoft resolved the error, Reuters reported.

Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport said there would be delays to passenger check-in “because of a technical fault.” Aena, which manages 46 airports in Spain, said “an incident in the computer system” could cause delays.

Train operators in the United Kingdom also blamed IT outages for cancellations Friday morning.

The glitch has affected news outlets including NBC News. Sky News, NBC News’ British partner broadcaster, unable to air live news.

“Sky News have not been able to broadcast live TV this morning, currently telling viewers that we apologise for the interruption. Much of our news report is still available online, and we are working hard to restore all services,” Sky News executive chairman David Rhodes said on X.

This is a developing story, check back here for updates soon.