An extensive technical outage swept through numerous airline systems worldwide on Friday, impacting operations in several major nations- United States, Australia, Germany, the UK and others. This disruption comes on the heels of a widespread Microsoft cloud outage that caused chaos for several low-cost airlines just hours earlier.
The root cause of the outage is suspected to be linked to the failure of CrowdStrike, a prominent cybersecurity platform known for providing security solutions tailored for Microsoft Windows operating systems.
In the latest, the outage has impacted the entire flight system at the Sydney Airport, impacting some of its airline operations and terminal services.
The airport authorities took it to X to inform the passengers about the possible delays.
"Flights are currently arriving and departing however there may be some delays throughout the evening. We have activated our contingency plans and deployed additional staff to our terminals. If you're travelling today make sure you leave plenty of time to come to the airport and check with your airline regarding the status of your flight," it said.
Meanwhile, Singapore's Changi Airport, one of the busiest in the world, has said that the check-in process is being managed manually.
The biggest impact has been face by the American Airlines, a major US carrier, grounded all its flights early Friday morning due to a communication problem, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The ground stop, a rare and significant event, signals a major disruption to air travel across the United States. While the FAA's status page confirmed the ground stop, details about the nature of the communication problem affecting American Airlines remain unclear.
American Airlines has not yet issued an official statement explaining the cause of the ground stop or its expected duration.
This incident follows a separate disruption on Thursday evening that wreaked havoc on several low-cost carriers, including Frontier Airlines, Allegiant, and Sun Country. A Microsoft cloud outage was identified as the culprit for these disruptions.
Microsoft said its outage started at about 6 pm ET on Thursday, with a subset of its customers experiencing issues with multiple Azure services in the Central U.S. region.
Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform, provides critical services for building, deploying, and managing applications and services. Its failure had a cascading effect on airlines relying on these services for booking, check-in, and operational functions.
Frontier Airlines confirmed that a "major Microsoft technical outage" temporarily impacted its operations, while Sun Country cited issues with a third-party vendor affecting its booking and check-in facilities, without explicitly naming Microsoft.
"The Allegiant website is currently unavailable due to the Microsoft Azure issue," Nevada-based Allegiant said in a statement to CNN.
The Microsoft cloud outage led to widespread flight cancellations and delays. Frontier alone cancelled 147 flights and delayed 212 others on Thursday, according to FlightAware data. Allegiant reported 45% of its aircraft were delayed, while Sun Country experienced delays on 23% of its flights.
US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg expressed concern about the disruptions, stating, "The department was monitoring the flight cancellation and delay issues at Frontier, adding that the agency will hold the company and all other airlines 'to their responsibilities to meet the needs of passengers'."
On the other hand, Turkish Airlines has also reported delays in their systems due to the outage. The airlines posted on X, "Dear Passengers, Due to a global technical issue in our information systems, we are currently experiencing problems with ticketing, check-in, and reservation processes. Our teams are working diligently to resolve the issue as soon as possible."
Microsoft confirmed early Friday morning that the Azure outage in the Central US region had been resolved. However, the company is now investigating a separate issue affecting various Microsoft 365 apps and services.
The consecutive technology failures impacting major airlines underscore the critical role cloud services play in modern aviation and the potential for widespread disruptions when those systems fail.