Major U.S. Airlines Grounded Amid Global Outage

Top U.S. airlines, including Delta, United, and American, experienced ground stops due to communication issues, disrupting operations globally. Smaller airlines like Frontier and Allegiant also reported outages linked to Microsoft and cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. The FAA and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg are monitoring the situation.

Major U.S. airlines such as Delta, United, and American Airlines issued ground stops on Friday due to communication issues, paralyzing operations across multiple industries globally.

While American Airlines resumed operations, other carriers like Frontier and Spirit also lifted ground stop directives. It's unclear if the disruptions were related to Microsoft and Crowdstrike outages affecting various sectors including banking and healthcare.

Smaller carriers such as Frontier Airlines, Allegiant, and SunCountry reported outages earlier. The top three airlines, Delta, United, and American, cited third-party tech issues. Frontier specifically mentioned a major Microsoft technical outage.

Allegiant confirmed website issues due to the Microsoft Azure problem. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is closely monitoring the issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines, providing assistance with ground stops.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg confirmed the department's oversight on flight disruptions and assured passenger needs will be met. By 5:58 am ET, 518 flights were canceled, and over 720 were delayed, as reported by FlightAware.

Microsoft acknowledged the Azure outage starting Thursday at 6 pm ET, affecting a subset of customers. The company is also investigating issues affecting Microsoft 365 apps and services.