Microsoft denies link to US flight ground stop causing widespread delays
The company stated there is no indication its global outage caused the FAA telecommunications failure that grounded flights on Friday.
Microsoft has denied any connection between its recent global service outage and a US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ground stop that disrupted air travel on Friday. According to reports from the Times of India, the company stated on X that there is no indication its services were related to the nationwide halt of departing flights.
The FAA issued the ground stop on Friday afternoon, citing safety reasons and extraordinary circumstances. The disruption, which affected all air route traffic control centres, resulted in more than 10,000 flight delays and over 6,600 cancellations, according to FlightAware. Data firm Cirium estimated that approximately 1.5 million people were stranded.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the issue to the FAA's ageing network, noting that routers and switches became overloaded with data. He described the system as running on 1980s copper lines. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin stated there was no evidence of a cyberattack or malicious activity, adding that the two issues were separate.
The FAA ground stop was lifted at 8:15pm ET on Friday. However, Secretary Duffy warned that the resumption of normal flight schedules would be slow and would depend on the availability of pilots and flight attendants.
Microsoft previously reported its own technical outage, which affected services like Outlook and Teams in 74 countries. The company said the issue was a technical flaw related to a network capacity upgrade and was not caused by AI or cyber interference.
