Massive Microsoft global outage affects airlines, banks, media: Key developments

NEW DELHI: A massive Microsoft outage disrupted life across the globe on Friday as several key services came to a grinding halt. In US, 911 services got impacted which led to grounding of all flights while Britain saw its biggest rail service and London Stock Exchange disrupted. In India also, over 200 flights were cancelled and airports across the country faced glitches due to the outage.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said a CrowdStrike update, released on Thursday, was behind the outage. "We are aware of this issue and are working closely with CrowdStrike and across the industry to provide customers technical guidance and support to safely bring their systems back online," Nadella posted.
Not just the aviation sector but banking, media and medical were also impacted across the globe. After over seven hours of chaos, Microsoft finally managed to fix the bug, however people continued to suffer due to the residual impact. Here is how the events unfolded:
Users complain of BSOD error
The issue came to forefront when several Windows 365 users worldwide have reported experiencing the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error. This issue causes systems to suddenly shut down or restart, rendering them unusable. Complaints flooded forums like Reddit, where users are sharing their frustration over their PCs randomly restarting and switching to blue screen error mode. Forums were filled with posts where people expressed their troubles.
Many flights cancelled, airport servies disrupted
Multiple Indian airlines, including SpiceJet, Indigo, Akasa Air, Vistara, Air India, and Air India Express, reported encountering technical challenges with more than 200 flights getting cancelled.
SpiceJet shared on social media platform X, "We are currently experiencing technical challenges with our service provider, affecting online services including booking, check-in, and manage booking functionalities."
Airports in New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Mumbai also reported IT issues, temporarily affecting some services. While many airlines in India resorted to hand-written boarding passes and manual frisking, flights arcoss the world from Hong Kong to US were impacted.
Brokerage firms impacted world-over
Brokerage firms in India faced technical issues, although stock exchanges remained unaffected. The NSE and BSE stated their operations were running smoothly. Traders at brokerages such as Nuvama Wealth Management, Edelweiss Mutual Fund, Motilal Oswal, IIFL Securities, 5Paisa Capital, and Angel Broking reported problems.
London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) also faced technical snag but later reported that its data and systems were back up and running amid Microsoft's global outage.
Meanwhile, some banks and financial services firms reported that employees and customers experienced difficulties accessing their systems following the outage. Barclays customers faced issues managing their accounts on the Smart Investor digital investing platform, while Allianz employees had trouble logging on to their computers.
IT ministry stayed in touch with Microsoft to resolve the issue
The Indian Ministry of Information Technology confirmed having communicated with Microsoft about the situation, which was later resolved.
"MEITY is continually in touch with Microsoft, which in turn is actively working with impacted entities. In addition, CERT-In is coordinating with CISOs of critical infrastructure entities. All impacted entities are working to bring up their systems. In many cases, systems are partially up," tweeted Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.