Mass IT outages hit banks, traders, airlines: Update 2

Adds Crowdstrike, Vitol, BP statements

Banks, airlines and commodity trading desks are among businesses and services reporting major disruptions today from worldwide IT outages.

Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike said a defect has been identified in a "content update" for its Microsoft Windows hosts. "This is not a security incident or cyberattack," Crowdstrike chief executive George Kurtz said in a statement posted on social media platform X. "The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

US technology giant Microsoft earlier said it was taking "mitigation actions".

Several airports are warning of flight delays and cancellations as a result of IT outages, including Amsterdam's Schiphol airport and Berlin airport in Germany. Switzerland's Zurich airport said operations are restricted and landings are currently not possible. In the US, American Airlines, Delta Airlines and United Airlines issued "ground stops" earlier, citing communication issues.

European low-budget airline Ryanair warned of "potential disruptions across the network due to a global third-party IT outage", while Dutch airline KLM said it and other airlines have been affected by "a global computer outage, making flight handling impossible".

Officials at two major commodity trading firms in Singapore told Argus that their computer systems had been affected by the problems. Some oil trading desks in Europe have also faced IT disruptions, sources said. A North Sea trader told Argus he has received messages from banks and brokers that they are having issues and will not be able to execute trades for him.

Trading firm Vitol said its "core trading operation is functioning well". Some individual PCs and some processes that interface with third-party systems "were impacted temporarily", it added. BP said it is working to assess any impacts on its systems, adding that safety will be its priority.

The London Stock Exchange said it is operating as normal, although it is experiencing problems with its regulatory news service.

By James Keates