Microsoft Outage Disrupts Services! From Airlines to Hospitals and Media Outlets, Operations Impacted Worldwide

Microsoft Outage: Microsoft announced a global outage on Friday that disrupted many Microsoft 365 services and caused significant problems for Windows PC users. Significant problems were caused by this unanticipated error, which mostly affected banks, airlines, media outlets, and stock exchanges.

Airlines Face Major Disruptions

The outage caused several flight cancellations worldwide, including in India, the US, Australia, and the UK. Indigo, one of India's largest airlines, announced on X (formerly Twitter), "As our systems are impacted by an ongoing issue with Microsoft Azure, we are experiencing high volumes at our contact center. Please contact us only if your travel is within 24 hours."

SpiceJet also took to X, stating, "We are currently experiencing technical challenges with our service provider, affecting online services including booking, check-in, and manage booking functionalities. As a result, we have activated manual check-in and boarding processes across airports. We kindly request passengers with upcoming travel plans to arrive at the airport earlier than usual to complete check-in at our counters. We sincerely regret any inconvenience this may cause and assure you that our teams are diligently working with our service provider to resolve these issues promptly. Thank you for your patience and cooperation during this time."

Mumbai Airport reported that the check-in systems (GoNow) used by Indigo, Akasa, and SpiceJet have been down globally since 10:45 AM.

In the US, low-cost carriers Frontier Airlines, Allegiant, and Sun Country also reported outages that affected their operations. Frontier Airlines canceled 147 flights on Thursday and delayed 212 others, according to data tracker FlightAware. Allegiant faced delays on 45% of its flights, while Sun Country experienced delays on 23% of its flights.

Melbourne Airport confirmed that it was experiencing issues impacting check-in procedures for several airlines.

Stock Exchanges and Other Industries Hit

The London Stock Exchange issued a statement saying its systems were down due to a "third party global technical issue." Many banks also faced an issue regarding this. However, India's National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange reported no impact on their operations.

News outlets in Australia reported that airlines, telecommunications providers, banks, and media broadcasters experienced disruptions as they lost access to their computer systems. Several banks in New Zealand also reported being offline due to the outage.

Microsoft on Global Outage

Microsoft's latest update on X indicated that its services are seeing improvements and the company is taking mitigation actions. The exact cause of the outage remains unconfirmed.

Reports indicate that users across India, Japan, Canada, Australia, US and many other countries have been affected by this issue.