Microsoft outage: Airports in Delhi, Germany report disruptions, emergency 911 lines down in US

Microsoft users worldwide, including banks and airlines, reported widespread outages on Friday, hours after the tech giant said it was fixing an issue that was affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services. Multiple airports across the world, including those in New Delhi and Berlin, are reporting disruptions in services after the global outage.

"Due to the global IT issue, some of the services at the Delhi Airport were temporarily impacted. We are closely working with all our stakeholders to minimise the inconvenience to our flyers. Passengers are requested to be in touch with the airline concerned or the help desk on ground for updated flight information," said the Delhi Airport on X. Systems are also down at Bengaluru airport, although the exact number of flights delayed is not known yet.

UK-based Sky News reported that emergency 911 lines have gone down in the US State of Alaska. "Due to a nationwide technology-related outage, many 911 and non-emergency call centres are not working correctly across the State of Alaska," a statement read. Sky News itself went off air amid the global outage linked to Microsoft.

Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport also reported disruption in services and said it was closely working with stakeholders to minimise inconvenience to flyers.

A spokesperson for the BIAL airport in Bengaluru said the global outage has been affecting operations of some airlines across their network, including BLR Airport since 10:40 am and Indigo, Akasa, and SpiceJet in T1 and Air India Express in T2 are among the impacted airlines. Airlines are taking proactive measures by initiating manual check-ins to ensure minimal disruption.

Airports in Germany, Australia affected by global outage

Multiple reports have claimed that airports in Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain and Hong Kong have also reported disruptions in services. Berlin airport has said it is experiencing delays to check-ins due to a "technical fault", while automated boarding scanners at UK's Edinburgh Airport are also offline. The London Gatwick airport was also affected.

Berlin airport has halted all flights until 10 am (0800 GMT) due to a technical fault, a spokesperson told Reuters on Friday. Hamburg airport said four of the airlines it services were experiencing problems with Crowdstrike, a global cybersecurity firm, but that the disruptions were manageable. Frankfurt airport said flights to and from Berlin had been halted but all other operations were running as normal. Several Indian passengers were stranded at Dubai Airport as services were impacted.

Top Dutch airline KLM said it could not handle flights on Friday and that it suspended most of its operations. Air France, KLM's parent company, said that its operations were disrupted. Turkish Airlines is experiencing problems with ticketing, check-in, and booking due to a global technical issue in its information systems. Singapore's Changi airport also said check-ins were being handled manually.

Swiss aviation services company Swissport also said the global outage was affecting services but it is working with Microsoft to resolve the situation. Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, one of Europe's busiest hubs, was also affected by the global cyber outage. 

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Airport is in "chaos" after the global breakdown in cloud computing services forced passengers to queue in long lines and check in manually, according to South China Morning Post. The Airport Authority said on Friday that flight operations at the airport were undisrupted, but affected airlines had “switched to manual check-in to continue serving passengers”.

Major US carriers including American Airlines,  Delta Airlines and United Airlines issued ground stops on Friday morning citing communication issues, less than an hour after Microsoft resolved its cloud services outage that impacted several low-cost carriers. Hundreds of flights were being cancelled by other airlines.

The aviation sector is hit particularly hard due to its sensitivity to timings. Airlines rely on a closely coordinated schedule often run by air traffic control. Just one delay of a few minutes can throw off a flight schedule for take-offs and landings for an airport and airline for the rest of the day.

Businesses affected by global outage

News outlets in Australia reported that airlines, telecommunications providers and banks, and media broadcasters were disrupted as they lost access to computer systems. Some New Zealand banks said they were also offline. News outlets were unable to broadcast on their TV and radio channels, and reported sudden shutdowns of Windows-based computers.

Airlines in India, including Vistara, Akasa Air and Indigo, suffered disruptions in their operations and a number of flights have been halted. "Our digital systems have been impacted temporarily due to the current Microsoft outage resulting in delays," wrote Air India.

The London Stock Exchange is among the businesses that have been affected by the global outage of IT systems around the world. Several major oil and gas trading desks in London and Singapore were struggling to execute trades due to a cyber outage, six industry sources told Reuters. LSEG Group's Workspace news and data platform also suffered an outage, affecting user access worldwide.

Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.” The glitch is causing users to see the Blue Screen of Death error messages, and there are widespread reports of disruptions in international airlines, banks and media outlets.

(with inputs from Reuters)

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