Airlines, banks interrupted online after 2nd web outage in past week

June 17 (UPI) -- For the second time in about a week, a mass Internet outage on Thursday disrupted a number of businesses around the world, including financial institutions and airlines.

Websites and apps began experiencing problems late Wednesday and the outage lasted for several hours. The problem was traced to Massachusetts-based service provider Akamai.

The issue briefly affected a number of companies, including Australia's Commonwealth Bank and carrier Virgin Australia. Major U.S. airlines, including Delta, American, Southwest and United, also were affected. Financial institutions including Discover and Navy Federal Credit Union also reported issues.

The Reserve Bank of Australia canceled a planned bond auction due to problems with banks that were planning on participating.

One of Australia's largest banks, ANZ, was also knocked offline. A spokesperson said Akamai's service designed to thwart attacks was behind the failure.

"Akamai is aware of the issue and actively working to restore services as soon as possible," the company tweeted, but didn't identify the problem.

"We are working with them to ensure that necessary measures are taken to prevent these outages from reoccurring," Virgin Australia said in a statement.

Most sites experiencing problems were back up and running within an hour.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange also reported difficulties related to the outage.

The third-party Internet outage is the second to occur in the past week.

News, retail and entertainment sites and apps went dark a week ago when Fastly, a cloud network that supports the sites, experienced a failure with similar results. The company later said a software bug caused the problem.

That outage affected sites like CNN, The New York Times, Hulu, HBO Max, Spotify, Amazon and Target.