Many US airlines and Australian banks hit by online outage

Many multinationals' websites have been experiencing online outages around the world, according to the monitoring site Downdetector.

They include the websites of major US Airlines companies like Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines. 

Also read: Several global media websites go down; White House, UK govt sites go dark too

According to Downdetector, over a thousand user complaints showed problems with Southwest Airlines, with over 400 user complaints indicating the same for Delta Air Lines. For the other two airlines, the figure was roughly 300. 

Major Australian banks have also reported problems with their websites and mobile apps. The companies stated that they were looking into the situation right now. 

The Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, and ANZ and Virgin Australia all tweeted about the disruptions.

A range of banks was scrambling to determine the source of an outage that was impacting internet banking and access to online apps across the country.

"We understand that some of our customers are currently experiencing issues accessing our services," the country's largest financial firm Commonwealth Bank told AFP. "This issue is affecting multiple organizations, including many of the major banks."

The outages in Australia began around 2:10 p.m. local time (0510 GMT), according to Downdetector.

Earlier on June 8, the websites of global media organisations including The Guardian newspaper, Financial Times of London and CNN international went down. All the pages showed 'error 503' for several minutes. The UK government's website gov. The UK had also gone down. Reports said the BBC website had also gone down but returned later. 

(With inputs from agencies)