Internet outages hit airlines, financial institutions

Airlines, financial institutions and other companies around the world on Thursday reported that they were experiencing technical difficulties due to a brief series of internet outages. 

The Associated Press reported that many of the outages were found in Australia as individuals attempted to make business transactions and book flights. 

Among the impacted companies were U.S.-based United Airlines and Southwest Airlines, which has already been facing days-long technical issues resulting in flight delays and cancellations. 

In a statement, Southwest said it had experienced a “brief outage” affecting its website and “internet-based tools” but that it had worked quickly to resolve the issue and bring the site back up and running. 

“The pause in connectivity did not impact our operation,” Southwest spokesperson Dan Landson said. “We appreciate our customers’ patience as our teams worked to quickly restore these systems.”

Meanwhile, United Airlines tweeted in response to questions from one user Thursday that it was “working promptly” to address the technical issues, adding that it would provide an update “once this matter is resolved.” 

Hi Andrew, we are experiencing technical issues and working promptly to fix them. We will update you once this matter is resolved. ^PC

— United Airlines (@united) June 17, 2021

The Los Angeles International Airport told CNN that while it had experienced temporary disruptions early Thursday, they did not cause any significant flight delays or cancellations. 

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange said in a tweet that it was “experiencing technical difficulties” and was “looking into the matter,” before adding in a follow-up post minutes later that its websites were “now functioning normally.” 

[Update] We can confirm all HKEX websites are now functioning normally.

— HKEX 香港交易所 (@HKEXGroup) June 17, 2021

Australia’s postal service said that an “external outage” was “impacting a number of our services,” adding in another tweet an hour later that while “most of our services are coming back online, we are continuing to monitor and investigate.” 

“We are sorry for any inconvenience caused, and will let you know of any further updates here,” it added. 

While most of our services are coming back online, we are continuing to monitor and investigate. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused, and will let you know of any further updates here.

— Australia Post (@auspost) June 17, 2021

The reported outages come just over a week after a global internet outage believed to have been triggered by a problem with software at web services company Fastly temporarily caused several websites to go offline, including those for The New York Times, Bloomberg News, the Financial Times and The Guardian. 

Nearly 21,000 Reddit users also said they were experiencing issues with the platform at the time, and the British government’s website was also experiencing loading problems.