Jetstar has cancelled all of its flights until tomorrow in the wake of the global tech crash.

The IT outage has sparked Friday night chaos at major airports across Australia as check-in computers and departure boards crashed.

Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin were all affected by outages along with major banks, retailers and media and entertainment companies.

The catastrophic global outage was caused by a ‘bad’ update of Crowdstrike antivirus technology on Microsoft computers – causing them to display the ‘blue screen of death’. 

Jetstar announced on Friday evening that all of its flights would be cancelled until 2am on Saturday.

Meanwhile, some Qantas passengers were even told to ‘Google’ when their flights were departing in a desperate workaround with departure boards non-operational. 

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

Sydney Airport said it had activated its ‘contingency plans’ and rushed additional staff to its terminals. 

‘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,’ a spokesperson said.

Melbourne Airport said it ‘is experiencing a global technology issue which is impacting check-in procedures for some airlines. 

‘Passengers flying with these airlines this afternoon are advised to allow a little extra time to check-in. Please check with your airline for flight updates.’ 

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. 

Passengers on one 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’s affecting airlines and businesses around the world’.

‘As a result of the outage, all Jetstar Airways flights have been cancelled until 2am local time Saturday 20 July.

‘The IT outage is impacting multiple 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’re due to travel today or tomorrow, but no longer wish to travel, we’re offering free moves (+7 days from date of travel) or voucher refunds. 

‘We’re working with our providers to resolve the issues as quickly as possible and thank customers for their understanding and patience.’ 

The outage is severely effecting airlines across the United States, where Microsoft revealed they first experienced the outage from at about 6pm ET (8am AEST) 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’.

A worldwide tech outage has crashed computers checkin-ing passengers for major Aussie airlines and airports on Friday afternoon (stock image)

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’.