A Microsoft global outage disrupted flights, news broadcasts, and services worldwide. CrowdStrike identified the issue, which affected various sectors, but resolved it quickly without any security breaches.
On Friday, a global outage of Microsoft services disrupted various sectors. CrowdStrike, a leading cybersecurity company, experienced interruptions during their news broadcasts and grounded their flights worldwide.
Three major US airlines—American, United, and Delta—suspended all their flights. In Australia, the New South Wales Police Force acknowledged the outage, which also caused disruptions at Sydney Airport, one of the country’s busiest transport hubs.
Grounded flights everywhere:
Almost 1,400 flights were canceled worldwide according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. The U.S. saw 512 cancellations, Germany had 92, India registered 56, Italy had 45, and Canada marked 21 cancellations across various airports.
At Bangalore International Airport, Terminal 1 saw over 90 percent of its flights disrupted. Additionally, passengers at Dubai Airport faced delays due to paused operations.
American Airlines later apologized for the inconvenience, stating that operations had finally been restored. The FAA monitored the situation, implementing ground stops to help until everything was sorted out.
CrowdStrike and Other Service Disruptions
George Kurtz clarified that the downtime was not due to hacking but was caused by conflicts with antivirus software. Macs and Linux operating systems were unaffected, and an update was issued immediately. However, the disruption could cost CrowdStrike up to $16 billion, or about a fifth of its total value.
The impact extended to other services provided by various companies. The Washington D.C. Metro initially warned of delays before confirming that everything was running as usual.
In the UK, community pharmacy services were disrupted, affecting access to prescriptions and the delivery of medicines. The National Pharmacy Association asked customers to be patient during the disruption.
Wider Implications and Fixes
This system failure raised questions about cybersecurity, but official sources confirmed it was not a security breach. Indian airlines had to rely on human assistance at airports due to check-in system failures. Similarly, the UK’s National Pharmacy Association reported disruptions affecting their services.
Nevertheless, Microsoft responded promptly, resolving many of the issues quickly. Their efforts highlighted the importance of an effective IT infrastructure and a rapid recovery strategy in preventing prolonged downtime, thereby maintaining vital functions within an organization.
Microsoft global outage impact on Indian airlines
Mumbai Airport reported that the IndiGo, Akasa, and SpiceJet check-in systems, known as GoNow, had been down since 10:45 a.m. This resulted in significant delays and inconvenience for passengers. Due to the failure of the Navitaire Departure Control System, Bengaluru Airport was forced to rely on manual passenger check-in and boarding pass issuance.
Akasa stated, “Due to infrastructure issues with our service provider, some of our online services, including booking, check-in, and manage booking services, will be temporarily unavailable.”
SpiceJet also provided an update on the disruption, stating, “We’re currently facing a technical issue in providing updates on flight disruptions. Our team is actively working to resolve this issue.”
IndiGo announced that some flights were canceled due to the worldwide travel system outage. Passengers were informed that the option to rebook or request a refund was temporarily unavailable.
The root cause of the Microsoft global outage
Microsoft cited a configuration change in a portion of the Azure backend workloads as the initial root cause of the outage. This change disrupted storage and compute resources, resulting in connectivity failures that impacted downstream Microsoft 365 services that rely on these connections. Microsoft is looking into the problem, which has affected users’ ability to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services.
The glitch caused users to see Blue Screen of Death error messages, and there were widespread reports of disruptions in a variety of industries, including international airlines, banks, stock exchanges, and media outlets.
However, neither the BSE nor the NSE, India’s two major bourses, reported any outages. NSE stated that they have very few applications on Microsoft. The outage did not affect Indian Railways services either.
