Microsoft IT outage live: Crowdstrike boss ‘deeply sorry’ as airline and hospital chaos could last for days

A worldwide Windows glitch has taken much of the world’s infrastructure offline .

Flights were grounded, and hospitals across the world have reported a variety of problems. TV channels have been taken off air. Everything from banks and payment companies to airlines and train companies said that they would see delays and technical issues.

Eerie scenes played out in New York as giant screens in the world-famous Times Square went dark.

The problem appears to be related to an update sent out by CrowdStrike, a cyber security company that makes a product that aims to keep computers safe.

Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz later issued a statement reassuring customers that the outage was not “a security incident or cyber attack.”

“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” Kurtz said, in a statement. “We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website.”

According to the aviation analysts at Cirium, one in 25 flights globally had been cancelled on Friday.

The Independent estimates that as many as 50,000 passengers who were planning to fly to or from the UK on Friday will wake up on Saturday where they did not intend to be.