UK airports, trains, London Stock Exchange, NHS impacted by global IT outage

London: The UK’s airports and trains experienced delays, with the London Stock Exchange and the National Health Service among the other organisations in the country dealing with the fallout of a global IT outage on Friday that has grounded planes and caused chaos around the world.

The outage, believed to be related to an issue at US-headquartered prolific cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike and Microsoft, seems to be affecting Windows PCs globally and has also forced ‘Sky News’ off the air.

London's biggest airport, Heathrow, said in a statement that its "flights are operational though we are experiencing delays". While the airport said it is implementing contingency plans to minimise impact, Gatwick Airport said passengers “may experience some delays" when checking in and passing through security. Luton and Edinburgh Airport, meanwhile, switched to manual systems to support operations.

The London Stock Exchange Group said trading continues to operate as normal while it is working on resolving an issue with its RNS Service, which provides the Regulatory News Service announcements.

The IT outage, which is not believed to be linked with a malicious attack or hack, also hit several National Health Service (NHS) general practitioner (GP) surgeries around the UK as they were unable to access patient records or book online appointments.

NHS England said the IT outage is "causing disruption in the majority of GP practices" in England, but there is currently no known impact on its 999 or emergency services.

"We are unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-notice cancellations, particularly on the Thameslink and Great Northern networks," said Govia Thameslink Railway, one of the train companies impacted.

"Additionally, other key systems, including our real-time customer information platforms, are also affected," it added.

National Rail, in charge of the country’s railway network, said its IT teams are "actively investigating to determine the root cause of the problem".

The first reports of the outage seem to have emanated from the United States late on Thursday after a breakdown of Microsoft services such as Azure and 365.

In a post on X, Microsoft 365 Status stated that “multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress”.