Microsoft cloud outage disrupts businesses across globe; Indigo, SpiceJet, Akasa flights delayed

A major outage of Microsoft 365 systems threw global businesses out of gear on Friday, paralysing operations of airlines, airports, banks, telecom companies, broadcasters, and supermarkets.

Indian carriers Air India, Indigo, SpiceJet, Akasa, and Air India Express said their operations were crippled due to the global outage, with several flights being cancelled or delayed as reservation and airport check-in systems were affected, the companies said on social media platform X.

“Flights are cancelled due to the cascading effect of the worldwide travel system outage, beyond our control. The option to rebook/claim a refund is temporarily unavailable,” low-cost carrier Indigo said on X.

SpiceJet said that the global technical outage affected the aviation industry, and the airline is “ensuring that all its flights scheduled for today will depart. We are working closely with airports and relevant authorities to minimise disruptions,” the company said.

Akasa Air said that due to infrastructure issues with its service provider, some of its online services, including booking, check-in and manage booking services will be temporarily unavailable.

“Currently we are following manual check-in and boarding processes at the airports and hence request passengers with immediate travel plans to reach the airport early to check-in at our counters,” the carrier said.

In an advisory to travellers, Bengaluru International Airport (BIAL) said its network was also affected by the Microsoft system outage.

Delhi International Airport, India’s busiest airport said, “We’re closely working with all our stakeholders to minimise the inconvenience to our flyers,” the airport operator said in X.

Blue screen of death

Earlier, The Guardian reported users across the world experienced problems with Microsoft 365 and services, and a blue screen with an error message popped up on computer terminals, forcing businesses to temporarily shut operations. Technology experts are investigating the matter.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said it is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. However, Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted, it said.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website,” CrowdStrike President and CEO George Kurtz said on X.

Microsoft said, “The underlying cause of the issue has been fixed and several Microsoft 365 apps and services have been restored to full functionality. Residual impact is still affecting some Microsoft 365 apps and services, and Microsoft 365 engineering are continuing to conduct additional mitigation actions to provide relief. We're continuing to observe an increase in functionality and availability for the remaining impacted scenarios and we're monitoring this closely to ensure we're progressing towards full recovery. Microsoft is continuing to treat this event with the highest possible priority.”

The preliminary root cause was a configuration change in a portion of its Azure backend workloads, which caused interruption between storage and compute resources which resulted in connectivity failures that affected downstream Microsoft 365 services dependent on these connections.

Reuters reported that top US carriers American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines grounded flights on Friday citing communication issues. Banks and financial services firms from Australia to India and Germany warned customers of disruptions, the newswire reported.

(This is a developing story)