American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines enforced ground stops on Friday morning citing communication problems, shortly after Microsoft resolved a cloud services outage that affected several carriers, such as Frontier Airlines, Allegiant, and SunCountry.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not immediately comment on the situation, while it remains unclear if the flight disruptions were directly related to the earlier Microsoft cloud outage.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated that the Department of Transportation is monitoring the situation and will ensure that airlines fulfill their responsibilities to passengers.
Frontier had to cancel 147 flights and delay 212 others, while Allegiant experienced delays in 45% of its flights, and SunCountry in 23%. The extent of the impact on flight schedules was not disclosed by the airlines.
On the other hand, numerous businesses and individuals reliant on Microsoft services are currently experiencing significant outages both in the UK and internationally, resulting in non-functional laptops and systems.
The disruption has affected a wide range of sectors, with prominent companies like Sky News unable to broadcast their morning show and instead displaying an apologetic message to viewers.
The outage has had a ripple effect, impacting banks, IT firms, and airlines throughout the morning on Friday.
On Thursday, Microsoft indicated that the outage affected Azure services in the Central U.S. region, with subsequent disruptions to various Microsoft 365 apps and services. Although Microsoft has largely recovered the affected services, some customers may still face residual issues in the region.
