Watch: Crowds gather in airport as global IT outage grounds flights

Watch as crowds gathered in Delhi airport on Friday, 19 July, as a worldwide Windows glitch grounded flights across the globe.

Banks, supermarkets and other major institutions reported computer issues disrupting services, with some airlines warning of delays and some airports grounding flights.

Windows PCs inexplicably started showing a “blue screen of death” error that left them unusable.

Sky News was offline and an ABC News presenter was unable to read from an autocue as TV stations were affected.

Govia Thameslink Railway – the UK’s busiest train operator, which runs the Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern services around London – said that it was experiencing “widespread IT issues”.

RyanAir said it was a “global third party IT outage” and advised travellers to arrive “at least three hours before” their flights.

Overnight, Microsoft confirmed it was investigating an issue with its services and apps.

Its service health website warned of “service degradation” that meant users may not be able to access many of the company’s most popular services used by billions across the globe.