Qantas makes stunning announcement to passengers as global tech crash sends travel into chaos

A major global tech outage leading to a computer crashes has caused chaos for airlines and airports across Australia.

The outage of Microsoft cloud services on Friday afternoon has crashed computers around the world and in major banks, businesses, newsrooms and television networks.

All major airports have reported outages effecting computers used for checking-in passengers, but flights are still departing and arriving. 

‘We have activated our contingency plans and deployed additional staff to our terminals,’ a statement from Sydney Airport reads.

‘If you’re travelling today make sure you leave plenty of time to come to the airport and check with your airline regarding the status of your flight.’

An image from the airport shows a number of the screens displaying the departure and arrival times of flights have crashed and instead have the ‘blue screen of death’.

Australia’s big three airlines – Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin – are also among the number of Aussie businesses being crippled by the outages. 

One Qantas passenger reported that they were left in the dark about when their flight was departing.

‘Qantas (is) telling passengers to Google their flight to find out when it leaves and at what gate because everything is down,’ the passenger wrote on X.

A Qantas spokesperson confirmed the airline is experiencing some impacts to systems due to the outage.

The spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia they are working with their providers to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

Another X user reported Jetstar‘s computer systems were also down at Sydney Airport where the airline announced it ‘can’t check in or board passengers’.

A later announcement from Virgin reportedly revealed the airline had  ‘no ability to get flight plans’.

A Virgin spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the airline is ‘working to resolve this issue as soon as possible’.

‘We appreciate the patience of all travellers as we work through a solution and will provide an update once more information is known,’ the spokesperson said. 

A Jetstar spokesperson said they are working with providers to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. 

The outage is severely effecting airlines across the United States, where Microsoft revealed it originated from at about 6pm ET on Thursday, Reuters reports. 

One passenger on American airline Delta said they weren’t allowed to board their plane despite ‘the crew and people are ready’.

Another Delta passenger said they were ‘sitting on a full plane going nowhere’.

Cyber expert Troy Hunt told Seven News the catastrophic crisis was not affecting all Microsoft Windows computers – but many of them.

Mr Hunt explained that CrowdStrike creates anti-virus products that regularly update with new definitions of viruses.

‘They run in a very privileged space on the PC, which means they have a lot of control. 

‘It looks like they’ve pushed a bad update, which is presently nuking every machine that takes it.’

‘It could be quite some time to get those machines back on time’.

More to come. 

Computer screens displaying the departure and arrival times of flights at Sydney Airport are instead showing the ‘blue screen of death’ (pictured)