Major IT issue sparks air traffic control chaos at UK airport - as internet outage shuts multiple websites
The outage comes just three weeks after ChatGPT, Zoom and Elon Musk's X went down, with many sites unresponsive
A major IT issue sparked air traffic control chaos at Edinburgh Airport this morning after infrastructure service Cloudflare went down for the second time in a month.
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The outage has impacted air traffic control systems according to reports, with the outage bringing a large number of other sites, including X, Vinted and Zoom, to a standstill.
In a statement on Friday, Edinburgh Airport said: "Due to an IT issue with our air traffic control provider, no flights are currently operating.
"Teams are working on the issue and will resolve as soon as possible."
The statement added: "We will provide updates when possible - please contact your airline for the latest information on your flight."
According to website outage monitor Downdetector, a range of websites supported by Cloudflare are currently offline.
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The IT issue affecting Air Traffic Control has now been resolved and flights have now resumed.
— Edinburgh Airport (@EDI_Airport) December 15, 2024
Passengers should continue to check their flight status with their airline before travelling to the airport.
We would like to thank passengers for their patience and understanding.
After around an hour, flights resumed, the airport confirmed to LBC.
Customers trying to access a host of popular apps and sites including X, Workday and Deliveroo were greeted with a “500 internet server error” warning, rather than a traditional landing page.
Cloudflare said it is experiencing "internal service degradation" in an update shortly after 9.30 on Friday, with internet users reporting that they were unable to access sites.
"Cloudflare is investigating reports of a large number of empty pages when using the list API on a Workers KV namespace," the website read.
"Cloudflare is investigating an increased level of errors for customers running Workers scripts. We are working to analyse and mitigate this problem."
The outage looks to have hit websites, services and trading platforms, including Vinted, X, Canva, Shopify, Zoom, LinkedIn and Deliveroo.
Cloudflare said there were "more updates to follow shortly".
It comes just weeks after a similar outage hit the provider.
Other affected websites and apps include MyFitnessPal, workday and website building and hosting site Squarespace.
The infrastructure provider supports some of the biggest websites on the internet, with an outage at Cloudflare immediately triggering the outage of a range of other seemingly unconnected websites.
The internet network provider Cloudflare suffered the outage on November 18, with the pause in service affecting many of the same platforms.
A statement from the company at the time read: "Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers.
"Further detail will be provided as more information becomes available."
It remains to be seen how long the outage will last.