An international IT outage has been impacting broadcasters, airports, airlines, railways and health services worldwide.
Sky News has been off air for a period earlier today, and airports across the world have been affected. There has been some disruption locally at Belfast International Airport, but across the Atlantic, both American Airlines and Delta Airlines were forced to ground all of its flights.
Belfast City Airport has not been directly affected, but services may be impacted by problems at other airports.
Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned customers of potential disruptions which it said would affect “all airlines operating across the network,” though it did not specify the nature of the disruptions.
BBC News has reported that the impact on the NHS has included major problems for GP surgeries across the country, and with communications between GP surgeries and pharmacies.
It is believed the issue is related to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike and Microsoft – although it is unknown if it is the same issue affecting airports and train services across the globe.
Microsoft said on Friday morning that it was continuing to address the “lingering impact” of its 365 applications and services that are in a “degraded state” while Crowdstrike said in an automated message that it was aware of reports of crashes.
The London Stock Exchange is among the businesses that have been affected by the global outage.
A statement posted on the exchange’s website early said that a technical issue was being investigated with the publication of RNS – the exchange’s Regulatory News Service – announcements.