A major IT outage is in full swing across the globe thanks to faults with Microsoft Windows. A bad update from cybersecurity provider Crowdstrike is reportedly causing thousands of PCs and servers worldwide to go offline and unable to reboot, causing chaos for broadcasters, airlines and many other businesses.

On Friday morning, Sky News went off air in the UK due to the issues. The channel showed a message reading: “We apologise for the interruption to this broadcast. We hope to restore the transmission of Sky News shortly.” It appeared to return to limited broadcasting just before 9am.

Airline Ryanair posted on X, formerly Twitter: “We’re currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a Global 3rd party IT outage which is out of our control. We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours before their scheduled departure time.”

“Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions,” Microsoft said on X this morning.

“We still expect that users will continue to see gradual relief as we continue to mitigate the issue.”

The dodgy software update is causing Windows computers to encounter the so-called “blue screen of death” (BSOD), which leaves machines unusable and stuck in what is known as a boot loop where they don’t turn on.