Airlines, airports and travel technology providers have been hit by a global IT outage that has also affected other industries.

Major airlines including American Airlines, United and Delta grounded flights earlier today. In Europe the outage impacted Air France, Ryanair, Iberia and others, while many airports around the world have said select systems are affected and they are making contingency plans.

Cybersecurity specialist Crowdstrike said the outage was triggered by a software update its systems automatically deployed to its customers early this morning. The company now says it has found the issue is fixing it.

Crowdstrike’s CEO, George Kurtz, said on X: “Crowdstrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.” He added that the issue was not a cyberattack and that it has “been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

Earlier, Microsoft had told media outlets that it was taking “mitigation actions” after experiencing an outage around 6pm Eastern Time on Thursday. It added that it is looking into issues with cloud services in the United States and an issue affecting some apps and services.

Meanwhile, airlines and airports issued their own statements informing passengers of the issue and the knock-on impact.

Dutch carrier KLM said the computer outage was “making it impossible to handle flights,” adding “For now, we are forced to suspend most of the operation.”

A statement on its website now says: “Following a global IT issue notably affecting several airlines and airports around the world, our operations are disrupted. Flights already on route are not affected.”

In a statement on its website Delta said that all flights are “paused” while it works through the issue with a technology vendor. Meanwhile, in a statement provided to BBC, United Airlines said: “A third party software outage is impacting computer systems worldwide, including at United. It added that it was “holding all aircraft” at departure airports while the issue is being resolved. “

American Airlines issued an update on X at 5 a.m E.T. to say that it has been able to “safely resume our operation.”

Distribution giant Amadeus, which has a long-standing partnership with Microsoft, said: “Various media outlets this morning have reported an issue with CrowdStrike (the American cyber security technology company) which is affecting many organizations. At Amadeus we have detected issues with some of our services and we are working to do what we can as the highest priority.”

Many airports also reported issues with Berlin Brandenburg Airport saying there would be delays in check in “due to a technical fault.”

Meanwhile, London’s Heathrow Airport, which is experiencing its busiest time of year, said on X: “Microsoft is currently experiencing a global outage which is impacting select systems at Heathrow. Flights are operational and we are implementing contingency plans to minimize any impact on journeys.” Dubai International Airport was also impacted but as of 5:05am ET said on X it was operating normally.

Sveinn Akerlie, CEO of airline disruption specialist Plan3, said: “Due to the complexity of the airline industry and its susceptibility to weather systems and technological outages, disruptions will continue to happen. However, what is surprising is the lack of corrective measures in place to deal with the passengers when they do.” 

Earlier this year, a report from Amadeus revealed that airlines are experiencing more disruptions than prior to the pandemic with executives expecting the issue to continue.

*This is a developing story and will be updated as necessary.