American Airlines cancels grounding order, multiple airlines resume operations, Microsoft cloud services interruption cloud of suspicion remains

According to the Zhitong Finance and Economics APP, several major US airlines, including American Airlines (AAL.US), Delta Air Lines (DAL.US), and United Airlines (UAL.US), announced the suspension of flight operations on Friday morning due to communication issues. It is worth noting that just a few hours ago, Microsoft had just resolved a cloud service interruption issue affecting several low-cost airlines. Currently, it is not yet certain whether this flight suspension is directly related to the earlier Microsoft cloud service interruption. In addition to the above-mentioned airlines, United Airlines and Allegiant Air (ALGT.US) have also announced flight suspensions. According to the latest reports, the US Federal Aviation Administration's air traffic control department stated that American Airlines canceled the ground stop order.

Low-cost airlines Frontier Airlines, a subsidiary of Frontier Group (ULCC.US), as well as Allegiant Air and Sun Country, have reported that their operations have been affected by the suspension. However, Frontier Airlines announced on Thursday evening that it is resuming normal operations and the ground stop has been lifted.

Frontier Airlines previously stated that a "major technical failure by Microsoft" temporarily affected its operations. Sun Country Airlines (SNCY.US) also mentioned that issues with a third-party supplier affected its booking and check-in systems, but did not specify which company.

US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated that the Department of Transportation is closely monitoring the flight cancellations and delays of Frontier Airlines and emphasized that the company and all other airlines will be required to "fulfill their responsibilities and meet the needs of passengers."

Allegiant Travel Company stated in a declaration, "Due to issues with Microsoft Azure, the Allegiant Travel website is currently unavailable." Allegiant Travel Company has not immediately responded to a request for comment from Reuters.

Data tracking company FlightAware's information shows that Frontier Airlines canceled 147 flights on Thursday and delayed 212 flights. The data shows that Allegiant Air had a 45% aircraft delay rate, while Sun Country Airlines had a 23% flight delay rate. Both companies did not disclose the specific number of flights affected.

Microsoft stated that the service interruption began around 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, when some customers in the central United States encountered issues with multiple Azure services. Azure, as a cloud computing platform, provides a range of tools for building, deploying, and managing applications and services. In addition, Microsoft is investigating issues affecting various applications and services, including Microsoft 365.

Meanwhile, in Australia, a network outage affected media, banks, and telecommunications companies. Government officials indicated that this outage appears to be related to technical issues with global cybersecurity company Crowdstrike. The crowdsourcing website Downdetector recorded service interruptions for several banks and telecommunications companies. Crowdstrike played a phone message when contacted by Reuters for technical support, confirming reports of its Falcon sensor crashing on Microsoft Windows operating systems Michelle McGinness, the head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, explicitly stated in an article that there is currently no information indicating that this interruption is due to a cybersecurity incident. The impact of this interruption is widespread, with Spain reporting that all its airports have experienced "computer events." Europe's largest airline, Ryanair, also issued a warning, alerting passengers to possible service disruptions that will affect "all airlines' entire network operations."

AWS, a cloud service provider, stated in a declaration that they are investigating connectivity issues related to Windows EC2 instances and AWS WorkSpaces. It is currently unclear whether all reported interruptions are related to issues with Crowdstrike, or if there are other issues causing these interruptions.

It is worth mentioning that Crowdstrike is a company that provides cloud-based security software, with its core product being the CrowdStrike Falcon platform, focusing on cybersecurity solutions. Microsoft, on the other hand, is a globally renowned technology company that offers a variety of products and services, including Windows operating systems and Microsoft 365 services. In some cases, Microsoft's operating systems may run alongside Crowdstrike's security software on users' computers.

In a recent global Windows computer blue screen event, many devices experiencing blue screens had installed Crowdstrike's latest security software. Crowdstrike confirmed that the issue was related to its "content deployment" and provided corresponding solutions