Microsoft denies link to US flight ground stop and delays
The company stated there is no indication its global outage caused the FAA's nationwide ground stop that affected thousands of flights.
Microsoft has denied any connection between its global service disruption and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) nationwide ground stop that halted US departing flights on Friday, November 13. According to reports from The Times of India and The Economic Times, the company stated on X that it has no indication the ground stop is related to Microsoft services.
The FAA ground stop, which began shortly before 4 pm ET on Friday, resulted in more than 10,000 flight delays and over 6,600 cancellations. Data firm Cirium estimated that approximately 1.5 million people were stranded. The FAA cited extraordinary circumstances and a temporary telecommunications outage for the stoppage, which was lifted at 8:15 pm ET.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed the disruption to an ageing air traffic control network, stating that switches and routers were overloaded with data. He described the system as running on 1980s copper lines. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin also told reporters there was no evidence of a cyberattack and described the two events as separate issues.
The Microsoft outage, which began on Thursday, affected Microsoft 365 applications including Outlook and Teams across 74 countries. The company traced the issue to a flaw from a previous network capacity upgrade. The disruption also impacted third-party services such as OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as government operations in Japan and Australia.
In India, The Federal reported that SpiceJet cancelled three flights from Delhi on Friday, while IndiGo noted its email support services were affected. Air India stated its flight operations remained unaffected but temporarily rerouted email traffic.
