A massive technology outage is wreaking havoc worldwide. Early reports blame the chaos on an issue with Microsoft, the dominant operating system for desktop computers and the software Falcon from Crowdstrike. We've been assured this isn't a cyberattack, but a software glitch affecting the OS of computers across the world.

Here are some of the ways this outage is causing global chaos today.

Flights grounded

American Airlines, United, Frontier, and Delta made a drastic move, grounding all flights.

The ground stop impacted all flights from the airlines, regardless of their destination, the Federal Aviation Administration said. As of mid-Friday morning, more than 600 flights into, out of or within the United States had been canceled, according to FlightAware.com.

The outage does NOT impact flights that were in the air when it occurred. The problem is with the other processes, such as check-in, luggage, and booking.

American Airlines has since resolved the problem, and its flights are resuming. But for tens of thousands of other travelers, chaos and uncertainty still reign in the airports.

As well, in New York City, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has also had its systems go offline.

Banking disrupted

Around the world, operations have ground to a halt at many major banks, including:

• Commonwealth Bank in Australia

• Capitec in South Africa

• Certain operations at Barclay's in the UK

• Banks in Israel, which have not been named at the time of this post

Some of the issues have been the inability to use ATMs, access online banking, and self-checkout registers. As well, the London Stock Exchange website is unable to update.