Jetstar has cancelled all flights until tomorrow following the global technology crash.
Computer failure caused chaos at Australia's major airports on Friday night as check-in computers and departure boards went down.
QantasJetstar and Virgin have all been hit by outages, as have major banks, retailers and media and entertainment companies.
The catastrophic global outage was caused by a “bad” update to Crowdstrike's antivirus technology on Microsoft computers – causing them to display the “blue screen of death.”
Jetstar announced on Friday evening that all its flights would be cancelled until 2am on Saturday.
Meanwhile, some Qantas passengers were even asked to “Google” when their flights were departing, in a desperate workaround as departure boards were not operational.
“Qantas (asks) passengers to Google “their flight to know when it leaves and from which gate because everything is broken,” wrote one passenger on X.
Sydney Airport said it had activated its “contingency plans” and sent extra staff to its terminals.
Computer screens displaying flight departure and arrival times at Sydney Airport are now showing the 'blue screen of death' (pictured)
“If you are travelling today, please ensure you allow plenty of time to get to the airport and check with your airline on the status of your flight,” a spokesperson said.
Melbourne The airport said it is “experiencing a global technology issue that is impacting check-in procedures for some airlines.”
“Passengers travelling with these airlines this afternoon are advised to allow extra time for check-in. Please check with your airline for flight updates.”
A Qantas spokesperson confirmed the airline was experiencing some impacts to its systems as a result of the outage.
The spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia they were working with their suppliers to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Another X user reported JetstarComputer systems were also down at Sydney Airport where the airline announced that it “cannot check in or board passengers.”
A subsequent announcement from Virgin reportedly revealed that the airline had “no ability to obtain flight plans.”
A Virgin spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the airline was “working to resolve this issue as soon as possible”.
“We appreciate all travelers’ patience as we work to find a solution and will provide an update as more information becomes available,” the spokesperson said.
Passengers on a Jetstar flight were left sitting on the tarmac for more than an hour on Friday afternoon
Jetstar said it “continues to be impacted by a global software issue that is affecting airlines and businesses around the world”.
“Due to the outage, all Jetstar Airways flights were cancelled until 2am local time on Saturday 20 July.
“The IT outage affects several Jetstar systems, including the system we use to contact customers, and we sincerely apologise for the frustration this is causing.
“Our teams are working on recovery options and we will contact customers with updates as soon as our systems are back online.
“If you need to travel today or tomorrow, but no longer wish to travel, we offer free travel (+7 days from the date of travel) or voucher refunds.
“We are working with our suppliers to resolve the issues as quickly as possible and thank customers for their understanding and patience.”
The outage is severely affecting airlines across the United States, where Microsoft revealed it first experienced the outage around 6pm ET (8am AEST) on Thursday, Reuters reports.
A passenger on US airline Delta said he was not allowed to board his plane even though “the crew and people were ready”.
A global technology outage crashed passenger check-in computers at major Australian airlines and airports on Friday afternoon (file image)
Another Delta passenger said he was “sitting on a full plane going nowhere.”
Cyber security expert Troy Hunt told Seven News the catastrophic crisis did not affect all Microsoft Windows computers, but a large number of them.
Mr. Hunt explained that CrowdStrike creates antivirus products that are regularly updated with new virus definitions.
“They operate in a very privileged space on the PC, which means they have a lot of control.
“It seems they deployed a bad update, which is currently destroying all machines that receive it.”
“It may take some time to get these machines back up and running.”
