Microsoft’s global outage impacts flights, industry ops across India

19 July 2024

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New Delhi: Major IT outages have hit industries across the world; more than 1,000 flights are cancelled and banking, healthcare and shops are affected. Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike was quick to say a “defect” in one of its software updates hit Windows operating systems.

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” the firm said.

The global outage of Microsoft’s apps and services on Friday has affected the services of Indian carriers, delaying flights and prompting manual check-ins at airports.

According to flightradar24.com, 245 flights (181 departures and 64 arrivals) faced delays till 1.10 pm on Friday at the Delhi International Airport. India’s busiest airport handles about 1,260 daily scheduled flights. Delhi International Airport Limited, which manages the airport, said it is working with all “stakeholders” to minimise inconvenience to flyers.

Sanjiv Kapoor, executive vice-president (strategies) of Saudia Airlines, was at the Delhi airport this afternoon. He said on X: “Due to a major global system outage, all gate screens at DEL (Delhi airport) blank. Flights are being held at gate. Some gates boarding pax (passengers) and holding on board, some flights holding pax at gate itself, which is better. Seems to be impacting many airports and airlines.”
Mumbai International Airport, India’s second busiest, was also affected. A total of 273 flights (192 departures and 81 arrivals) faced delays till 1.10 pm. The Mumbai airport handles about 870 daily scheduled flights.

Microsoft said on X that the company is investigating an issue impacting its users’ ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services.

It said that the preliminary cause for this disruption was a configuration change that was done “in a portion of our Azure backend workloads”, which resulted in connectivity failures that affected downstream Microsoft 365 services dependent on these connections. Azure is Microsoft’s Cloud computing platform.

IndiGo, India’s largest carrier, said that its systems across the network have been impacted by the issue with Microsoft Azure, resulting in increased wait times at its contact centres and airports. “You may experience slower check-ins and longer queues. We are all hands-on deck and are working relentlessly to restore stability and normalcy. Our digital team is also coordinating closely with Microsoft Azure to resolve these issues swiftly,” it noted.

SpiceJet said it was experiencing technical challenges with its “service provider”, affecting online services including booking and check-in functionalities. “As a result, we have activated manual check-in and boarding processes across airports. We kindly request passengers with upcoming travel plans to arrive at the airport earlier than usual to complete check-in at our counters,” it added.

Akasa said that due to infrastructure issues with its “service provider” some of its online services, including booking and check-in services, will be temporarily unavailable. “Currently we are following manual check-in and boarding processes at the airports and hence request passengers with immediate travel plans to reach the airport early to check-in at our counters,” it added.

Vistara also said that it was experiencing technical challenges across various aspects of our operations due to a global outage at its “service provider’s end”.
According to flightradar24.com, a total of 138 flights (102 departures and 36 arrivals) have faced delays till 1.10 pm on Friday at the Bengaluru International Airport, which handles about 690 daily scheduled flights.