Microsoft users globally, including many in India, reported massive outages in services on Friday, with outage tracking website Downdetector showing users flagging disruptions across various services.
The outage wrought havoc on global computer systems, grounding flights, making ATMs dysfunctional, derailing television broadcasts and impacting telecommunications.
According to media reports, more than 160 flights in different airports in India were affected due to the outage.
Passengers were left facing delays at check-ins, and boarding, and had to deal even with the cancellation of several flights, officials said.
As many as five Indian airline carriers -- Air India, IndiGo, Akasa, SpiceJet, and Vistara -- announced disruptions to their booking systems on Friday, forcing them to switch to manual mode. They urged flyers to reach out to their respective airlines for information on the flights.
Union Minister for Civil Aviation Ram Mohan Naidu stepped in to say his actively managing the crisis and requested the passengers to cooperate with the airport staff.
"We have instructed all airlines and airport authorities to keep passengers informed about their flight status and provide necessary assistance," Naidu said, adding that additional measures include regular updates on flight status and deployment of extra staff to assist passengers and address their concerns.
IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the issue behind the outage had been identified and updates have been released to resolve it.
"MeitY (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) is in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage. The reason for this outage has been identified, and updates have been released to resolve the issue. CERT is issuing a technical advisory. NIC (National Informatics Centre) network is not affected," Vaishnaw wrote on social media.
The airlines, that were hit by the outage, confirmed that it was caused by the ongoing outage in Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure, or just Azure, is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It offers management, access, and development of applications and services to individuals, companies, and governments.
"Our systems are currently impacted by a Microsoft outage," IndiGo, the country's largest airline by market share, said in a post on social media platform X. "During this time, booking, check-in, access to your boarding pass, and some flights may be impacted."
Air India said its systems had been "impacted temporarily due to the current Microsoft outage," causing travel delays.
Budget operator SpiceJet said it had reverted to manual check-ins and boarding after "technical challenges."
"Our teams are diligently working with our service provider to resolve these issues promptly," the airline said.
Budget carrier Akasa said: "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. Currently we are following manual check-in and boarding processes at the airports."
Microsoft Windows users worldwide have taken to social media to report the issue of Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) errors, which have led to significant disruptions. According to reports, affected Windows users are encountering blue-screen errors, causing their laptops and PCs to become stuck in a restart loop.
What caused the outage
A new Crowdstrike (cybersecurity software firm) update is being cited as the cause of the outage, which has impacted Windows-based desktops and laptops.
However, CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.
Microsoft said in a statement it was taking "mitigation actions" in response to service issues. It was not clear if those were linked to the global outages.
"We remain committed to treating this event with the highest priority and urgency while we continue to address the lingering impact on the Microsoft 365 apps that are in a degraded state," the US tech giant said.
"Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions," Microsoft said in a post on social media platform X.
Banks, airports, companies hit worldwide
In the UK, airports and trains experienced delays, with the London Stock Exchange and the National Health Service among the other organisations in the country dealing with fallout due to the outage.
London's biggest airport, Heathrow, said in a statement that its "flights are operational though we are experiencing delays".
While the airport said it is implementing contingency plans to minimise impact, Gatwick Airport said passengers may experience some delays" when checking in and passing through security.
Luton and Edinburgh Airport, meanwhile, switched to manual systems to support operations.
The London Stock Exchange Group said trading continues to operate as normal while it is working on resolving an issue with its RNS Service, which provides the Regulatory News Service announcements.
In the US, major airlines, including Delta, United, and American Airlines, grounded all flights on Friday over a communication issue, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Flights were suspended at Berlin Brandenburg airport in Germany due to a "technical problem", a spokeswoman told AFP.
"There are delays to check-in, and flight operations had to be cancelled until 10:00 am (0800 GMT)," the spokeswoman said, adding that she could not say when they would resume.
All airports in Spain were experiencing "disruptions" from an IT outage that has hit several companies worldwide on Friday, airport operator Aena said.
Hong Kong's airport also said some airlines had been affected, with its authority issuing a statement in which it linked the disruption to a Microsoft outage.
The UK's biggest rail operator meanwhile warned of possible train cancellations due to IT issues, while photos posted online showed large queues forming at Sydney Airport in Australia.
"Flights are currently arriving and departing; however, there may be some delays throughout the evening," a Sydney Airport spokesman said.
"We have activated our contingency plans with our airline partners and deployed additional staff to our terminals to assist passengers."
Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator said the "large-scale technical outage" was caused by an issue with a "third-party software platform", adding there was no information as yet to suggest hacker involvement.
Sky News in the UK said the glitch had ended its morning news broadcasts, while Australian broadcaster ABC similarly reported a major "outage".
Some self-checkout terminals at one of Australia's largest supermarket chains were rendered useless, displaying blue error messages.
New Zealand media said banks and computer systems inside the country's parliament were reporting issues.
Australian telecommunications firm Telstra suggested the outages were caused by "global issues" plaguing software provided by Microsoft and cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.
'Enormous' impact
University of Melbourne expert Toby Murray said there were indications the problem was linked to a security tool called Crowdstrike Falcon.
"CrowdStrike is a global cyber security and threat intelligence company," Murray said.
"Falcon is what is known as an endpoint detection and response platform, which monitors the computers that it is installed on to detect intrusions (i.e. hacks) and respond to them."
University of South Australia cybersecurity researcher Jill Slay said the global impact of the outages was likely to be "enormous."
