Microsoft Outage: Passengers were stranded as check-in services and flight operations were severely impacted due to the Microsoft outage which hit operations of airlines, banks and businesses across the globe on Friday.
Visuals shared on social media platforms showed serpentine queues outside check-in counters at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport as online services were down due to the outage forcing airlines to switch the check-in and boarding protocols to manual mode.
All major airlines, including IndiGo, SpiceJet, Akasa, and Air India, were impacted due to the outage prompting them to issue advisories to the passengers.
At Delhi Airport’s Terminal 3, long queues of passengers were seen as flights operations were hit amid the global Microsoft outage.
#WATCH | Delhi: Microsoft faces global outage, flight operations affected. Visuals from Indira Gandhi International Airport, Terminal 3.
The airport administration tweets, “Due to the global IT issue, some of the services at the Delhi Airport were temporarily impacted. We are… pic.twitter.com/2G5eDLsvLr
— ANI (@ANI) July 19, 2024
“Due to the global IT issue, some of the services at the Delhi Airport were temporarily impacted. We are closely working with all our stakeholders to minimise the inconvenience to our flyers. Passengers are requested to be in touch with the airline concerned or the help desk on ground for updated flight information,” the Delhi Airport wrote on X.
Microsoft outage
A massive global outage crippled operations of airlines, banks and businesses across the world on Friday following an update from a third-party software platform on devices running Windows 10. Microsoft said it is aware of the issue and assured a resolution is forthcoming.
“We’re aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.
Airline ops hit
The outage put operations of businesses and systems across the globe in a state of limbo with airports and airline operations facing significant disruptions. Several users reported disruptions on outage-tracking website Downdetector, and many took to X (now twitter) to vent their frustration on the ‘Blue Screen of Death’ error messages.
However, the country’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) said its systems are unaffected by the Microsoft global outage. Stock exchanges NSE and BSE too said they are not impacted due to the global outage of Microsoft systems.
Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that IT ministry is in touch with Microsoft regarding global outage, and added that NIC network is not affected.
CERT to issue advisory
In a post on X, IT minister Vaishnaw said that the reason for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue.
CERT is issuing a technical advisory, he wrote.
“MEITY is in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage… NIC network is not affected,” the minister said.
Meanwhile, CERT-In has issued an advisory on the Microsoft outage caused by Crowdstrike update, and rated its severity as “critical”.
(With PTI inputs)