International delivery firm Parcelhero is warning that the CrowdStrike cybersecurity firm outage could have serious knock-on effects for global supply chains and deliveries.

Parcelhero’s head of consumer research, David Jinks, said: “Many airports, ports, railways and retailers reported problems as a result of the IT outage. Delayed flights and issues with IT systems at airports will impact airfreight.

“Not only will slots for dedicated airfreight flights be disrupted, but many international goods and packages are transported not only in specially designed cargo planes but also in the cargo holds of passenger aircraft.”

As of 3:00pm BST, 3,343 flights have been cancelled globally (source Cirium). It is unclear how long it will take for the Windows-based software issues to be resolved.

Jinks added: “Time will tell the extent of disruption to international trade and industry caused by the global IT issue. It’s believed that a CrowdStrike update caused a BSOD loop on some Windows machines, meaning they repeatedly booted and crashed.

“The problem was that many systems updated automatically overnight. CrowdStrike is reported to have rolled back the update and the company stated on Friday morning that ‘a fix has been deployed’.”

READ MORE NEWS: 1,000 flights cancelled as software glitch causes air travel chaos