By DAVID AVERRE and REUTERS
Customers travelling with the carriers said on social media their pilots had told them all systems were down and that all aircraft must remain grounded until they are brought back online. Many complained they had been left stranded in planes sitting on the tarmac before take-off or after landing at their destination, while images snapped in airports in the UK and Australia showed the departures terminals packed with travellers as flights were cancelled or delayed Social media was also awash with reports from medical staff that electronic medical record (EMR) systems had crashed, taking hospitals nationwide offline. And images shared to social media showed self-checkout tills, ATM machines, television channels and a host of other tech displaying error messages. The outages appear to be linked to US IT company Crowdstrike and an update related to its ‘Falcon sensor’ – an agent that is designed to analyse internet connections to prevent viruses and other malicious software. Several reports suggested the update caused a crash for computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system.