The latest global Microsoft 365 outage has affected a several airlines worldwide, disrupting communication channels and, in some cases, contributing to flight delays and cancellations.
International Outage
The Microsoft 365 outage spanning Nov. 12. – Nov. 13. has had widespread impacts on airport and airline operations, with many reports of communication networks going offline, causing internal and external disruption. In some cases, passengers were unable to contact airline customer service.
Airlines reported to have been affected are as follows: IndiGo, Akasa Air, SpiceJet and Air India, Emirates, Aurigny, CemAir, Vueling, Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines.
Most of the listed airlines experienced relatively minor complications, primarily involving email services and communication systems.
SpiceJet appears to have been among the more heavily impacted carriers, reportedly facing operational disruption at Delhi Airport (DEL). The airline saw two delayed flights and three cancelled services to Pune, Mumbai and Leh.
IndiGo addressed the situation in a post shared on X, stating:
“Due to a global Microsoft service disruption, our email support services are currently impacted, and we may not be able to receive your emails.”
The carrier added that alternative customer support channels remained operational, including its AI-powered chatbot, 6E Skai.
Network Shortage Context
Large-scale software outages affecting major technology providers have become an increasing concern for the aviation industry, which relies heavily on clou-based communications and operational systems.
The Microsoft outage affected services including Outlook, Copilot and Teams across 74 countries. The disruption was first reported arpund at 4:00 p.m. (GMT) on Nov. 12, and remained ongoing as of 7:00 a.m. (GMT) on Nov. 13, with over 43,000 reports of service issues.
Microsoft is yet to issue a statement on the root cause of the outage, however some reports have suggested the disruption may be linked to server overloads and failed automated health checks.
Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Copilot, Agents and Platform, said:
“We regret that today’s outages caused disruptions for our customers, and we are working to address the issue. We will continue to share more information as soon as we have it, and for now I can confirm that there is no indication this is the result of malicious or cyber activity.”
Microsoft are yet to confirm when their network will be fully back online, though have reportedly been seeing improvements on the service availability, with email queues slowly decreasing and returning to normal levels. A spokes person for Microsoft shared:
“We’re closely monitoring service health and validating recovery across affected connection methods to ensure sustained service stability.
At this time, we have no evidence of malicious activity associated with this incident. We will continue to treat this with urgency until full mitigation, and we will share a full Post-Incident Report with root cause and defence-in-depth actions after mitigation is complete.”
How have you been affected by the global Microsoft 365 interruption? Let us know in the comments!
