A global outage of Microsoft's apps and services caused significant disruptions to Indian carriers, leading to flight delays and manual check-ins at airports across the country on Friday, July 19. The operations of major airlines, including Indigo, Vistara, Akasa, SpiceJet, and Air India, were affected, along with critical airport services.
Bengaluru Airport issued an advisory for travellers as it faced significant operational challenges. The airport's spokesperson said that a global outage with the Navitaire Departure Control System (DCS) impacted several airlines, including Indigo, Akasa, and SpiceJet at Terminal 1, and Air India Express at Terminal 2, starting at 10.40 am on July 19. Both the Common Use Terminal Equipment (CUTE) and Common Use Self Service (CUSS) systems were also disrupted. To mitigate the impact, airlines initiated manual check-ins to minimise disruption to passengers and flight schedules.
Delhi Airport services were similarly impacted, causing further delays and inconveniences for passengers. Mumbai International Airport, India's second busiest, was not spared either. A total of 273 flights, including 192 departures and 81 arrivals, faced delays by 1.10 am. Mumbai airport handles approximately 870 scheduled flights daily, highlighting the scale of the disruption.
Microsoft acknowledged the issue on X (formerly Twitter), stating that they are investigating an issue impacting users' ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services. The outage's effects extended beyond India, with airlines and banks globally experiencing service disruptions.
Millions of Microsoft Windows users are experiencing the "Blue Screen of Death" error that causes their computers to shut down or restart. The company said it is due to a recent update of American cyber security company Crowdstrike. It cited a "configuration change in a portion of its Azure backend workloads" as the primary reason.
The outage led to an interruption between storage and compute resources which resulted in connectivity failures that affected downstream Microsoft 365 services dependent on these connections, the company noted.
"The Microsoft / CrowdStrike outage has taken down most airports in India. I got my first hand-written boarding pass today," a user wrote in a post on the social media platform X.com.
The South China Morning Post reported that an IT breakdown has left the international airport in Hong Kong in "chaos". Australian broadcasters like Channel 10, ABC, and Sky News Australia were down. The UK's London Stock Exchange reportedly suffered an outage, while in the US Alaska state, the emergency 911 lines have gone down.
"Multiple services are continuing to see improvements in availability as our mitigation actions progress," Microsoft 365 Status said in an X post.