Airports, flights hit by global Microsoft outage

The Germany capital city airport’s halt in operations comes as carriers, media companies, banks and telecoms firms around the world report system outages

by Gulf Business with Reuters

July 19, 2024

Image credit: Getty Images

Spanish airport operator Aena on Friday reported a computer systems “incident” at all Spanish airports which caused flight delays, while Lisbon airport, Portugal’s biggest, also experienced disruptions amid a global Microsoft outage.

Hundreds of passengers were stranded in the departure hall of Madrid Barajas airport, the country’s largest, waiting for information, according to a Reuters reporter.

Aena, which also operates airports in Latin America and Britain, said the IT issues mainly affected check-in processes and passengers information systems.

In a post on social media platform X, Aena said some systems were recovering and all its airports were operating, although not at full speed yet.

Aena recupera de forma progresiva los sistemas tras una incidencia informática mundial.

➡️ Todos los aeropuertos de la red en España están operativos y los vuelos se están operando en colaboración con las aerolíneas.

➡️ La programación del día se está cumpliendo aunque con… https://t.co/idT4uY6r0r pic.twitter.com/RXq0RNg020

— Aena (@aena) July 19, 2024

At Barajas, passengers were being issued with paper boarding passes instead of the usual QR codes, with staff removing parts to process passengers through to boarding. Computer luggage check-in systems were down, meaning passengers were not being charged for excess baggage.

Several airlines, including Ryanair and Vueling, the Barcelona-based low-cost unit of IAG advised their customers of delays, with Ryanair telling customers to come to the airport to check in rather than trying online.

Iberia said its customers were processed manually from early morning until 9:25 am(0725 GMT) when it was able to identify and fix the fault and restart electronic systems.

Portugal

In Portugal, most flights were departing with a delay of about one hour at Lisbon airport, but a spokesperson at Vinci’s ANA airports operator could not immediately confirm if the delays were related to a systems outage.

Dozens of passengers at Lisbon airport were stranded and left without precise information as their flights are delayed or cancelled, a Reuters reporter said. At least two flights to Paris and one to Porto have been cancelled.

Germany

Similarly, flight operations were hit at Berlin’s Brandenburg airport. A Berlin airport spokesperson provided the update to Reuters.

Lufthansa said in a statement that its profile and booking retrieval functionality may be limited and that it was working on a solution. Additionally, Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings said that it was affected by a global IT malfunction, and online check-in was currently not possible.

The airport in the western German city of Dusseldorf said that it was experiencing disruptions to the check-in and boarding processes with Eurowings flights, and departures had to be checked manually.

German air traffic control said that Berlin airport is now able to handle 20 flights per hour.

Frankfurt airport said flights to and from Berlin had been halted until 0945 GMT but that all other operations were running as normal.

A spokesperson for Zurich airport said it was not experiencing problems, but that flights to Berlin were cancelled because the airport was not accepting incoming flights until 1000 GMT.

Turkey

Turkish Airlines announced on Friday it cancelled 84 flights as its systems suffered during the global outage.

“In order to avoid any disruption, some flights will be cancelled and our flights will gradually return to normal as soon as possible,” Yahya Ustun of Turkish Airlines, announced on X.

Dear Passengers,

Due to a global technical issue in our information systems, we are currently experiencing problems with ticketing, check-in, and reservation processes.

Our teams are working diligently to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

For the latest updates, please… pic.twitter.com/zPFSVJ20C4

— TK HelpDesk (@TK_HelpDesk) July 19, 2024

Most of the Turkish flag carrier’s cancelled flights were domestic and to and from Europe, as per various media reports. Updated data on its international flight operations was not available.

American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines and Allegiant Air grounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft said it resolved its cloud services outage that impacted several low-cost carriers.

Read: Microsoft global outage: Major banks, airlines and media impacted