Microsoft IT outage live: Travellers still stranded as experts warn problem is likely to happen again

CrowdStrike said a significant number of the over 8.5 million devices affected from Friday’s botched software update are back online.

The outage led to over 1,500 cancelled flights in the US and dozens more across the UK for the third day in a row, leaving passengers stranded across airports.

Hospitals, GPs, pharmacies, banks, supermarkets and millions of businesses have also been impacted .

CrowdStrike said the outage was caused by a defect in an update to its “Falcon” cybersecurity defence software for Windows hosts.

Over the weekend, Microsoft released a recovery tool to help repair Windows machines hit by the glitch that affected over 8.5 million devices .

However, experts warned that it could take weeks for global tech infrastructure to fully recover.

“Even if we could guarantee it could be fully fixed on Monday GPs would still need time to catch up from lost work over the weekend, and NHSE should make clear to patients that normal service cannot be resumed immediately,” David Wrigley, deputy chair of GPC England at the BMA, said.