On Friday, a significant outage in Microsoft’s cloud computing services caused disruptions worldwide, affecting companies across various sectors. Airlines were grounded, news outlets experienced broadcast interruptions, and brokerage houses faced operational issues. The outages were reported primarily in Australia, the US, the UK, and India, impacting banks, media organizations, stock markets, government branches, and airports.
DownDetector, a real-time internet outage monitoring site, recorded numerous global reports of Microsoft services failures, including Azure and Microsoft 365. In the US alone, there were 1,751 reported outages.
In Pakistan, a maximum of 25 Azure outages and 13 Microsoft 365 outages were reported. Haroon Baloch from digital rights organization Bytes for All told Dawn.com that no Pakistani organizations or airlines reported disturbances due to the Azure outage.
Microsoft stated that the outage began at 6pm Eastern Time on Thursday, affecting a subset of Azure customers in the Central US region. They are also investigating issues with Microsoft 365 apps and services, working on mitigation efforts.
IT security firm Crowdstrike noted that their Falcon Sensor software was causing Windows crashes, leading to the infamous Blue Screen of Death. Major US airlines, including American, Delta, and United, issued ground stops due to communication issues shortly after Microsoft resolved its outage, affecting several low-cost carriers. The FAA did not comment immediately.
In Australia and New Zealand, a cyber outage linked to issues at Crowdstrike and Microsoft impacted media, retailers, banks, airlines, and telecom companies. Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, and Sydney Airport reported delays. Telstra mentioned that the global issues with Crowdstrike and Microsoft were causing customer service disruptions. Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator’s office clarified that there was no indication of a cybersecurity incident.
In India, five airlines, including IndiGo and Air India, reported IT disruptions, with manual check-ins and boarding processes implemented temporarily. Delhi Airport worked with stakeholders to minimize passenger inconvenience.
Across Europe and Asia, numerous airports and airlines faced disruptions. At Edinburgh Airport, boarding pass scanners displayed “server offline” messages. Microsoft attributed the issue to a configuration change in Azure-backed workloads.
Crowdstrike’s alert indicated that their Falcon Sensor software was causing Windows crashes. This led to chaos for passengers worldwide, with Eurocontrol noting unclear impacts on flight numbers.
Airports like Madrid-Barajas experienced long queues and confusion. The aviation sector, particularly sensitive to timing disruptions, faced widespread delays.
Some airlines, like Spain’s Iberia, managed to avoid cancellations, while others implemented temporary solutions like handwritten boarding passes and alternative systems for check-ins.
The situation gradually improved, with some airlines and airports reporting a return to normal operations.
