Global Chaos: Microsoft Outage, Airline Disruptions, 911 Outage

Today, a global Microsoft cyber outage disrupted IT systems in countries worldwide, impacting airlines, health systems, and emergency services.

By Priyal Dutta 19 Jul 2024 in Industry

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Microsoft Meltdown Leads to Airline Disruptions and 911 Failures

Today, a major Microsoft cyber outage affected several IT systems worldwide, including those in India, Australia, Germany, the United States, the UK, and other countries. The outage disrupted airlines, health systems, and emergency services.

Even Microsoft 365 has become inaccessible to clients around the world, including major cities across India

The outage is possibly due to the failure of CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity platform that provides security solutions for Microsoft Windows. The outage disrupted Australia's banks, telecoms, media outlets, and airlines. Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator said it was a “large-scale technical outage affecting several companies and services across Australia this afternoon."

In India, SpiceJet, IndiGo and Akasa Airlines also faced difficulties. Most of the passengers were unable to do their web check-in online

Berlin airport halted all flights until 1:30 pm (Indian Time) due to a technical fault. The airport operator posted on social media that check-ins were delayed due to the error. Major US airlines, including American Airlines, Delta, and United, reportedly grounded all flights. The global outage affected Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, one of Europe's busiest hubs. "The outage impacts flights flying from and to Schiphol," a spokesperson said. According to data tracker FlightAware, Frontier cancelled 147 flights on Thursday and delayed 212 others. The data showed that 45% of Allegiant aircraft were delayed, while Sun Country delayed 23% of flights. The companies did not give details on the number of flights impacted.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg stated that the department is monitoring Frontier's flight cancellation and delay issues and that the government will hold the firm and all other airlines "to their responsibilities to meet the needs of passengers." "The Allegiant website is currently unavailable due to a Microsoft Azure issue," Allegiant, based in Nevada, told CNN.

The affected airlines are doing manual check-ins and boarding processes at the airports

Flyers at Britain's Edinburgh Airport were unable to use automated boarding pass scanners, and security monitors displayed a message saying "server offline." In India, the outage caused widespread flight delays across airports. It also affected several airlines' booking and check-in services, including IndiGo, Akasa Airlines, and SpiceJet. Microsoft said its outage started at about 6 p.m. ET on Thursday, and a subset of its customers experienced issues with multiple Azure services in the Central US region.

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