The Microsoft Azure outage on Wednesday impacted Alaska Airlines as well. The company, in an official statement on X, stated that several of its services are hosted on Azure. This includes the services of Hawaiian Airlines, that are owned by Alaska Airlines.
“Due to a global outage impacting the Microsoft Azure platform where several Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines services are hosted, we are currently experiencing a disruption to key systems, including our websites,” the airline said in a statement posted on X.
Disruption in official websites and mobile apps
Ever since the outage, Alaska Airlines’ website and mobile app have been inaccessible or operating with errors, forcing customers unable to check in online to visit airport agents for boarding passes.
The disruption adds to an already troubled period for the carrier; just days earlier, it had grounded flights after a separate IT failure.
Other services reliant on Azure, such as Office 365, Xbox Live and gaming platforms, also reported interruptions according to AP News.
The outage stems from issues within Azure’s global content delivery network service, Azure Front Door (AFD). Microsoft stated an inadvertent configuration change triggered the incident, causing widespread latency, timeouts, and errors across multiple services.
{{/usCountry}}The outage stems from issues within Azure’s global content delivery network service, Azure Front Door (AFD). Microsoft stated an inadvertent configuration change triggered the incident, causing widespread latency, timeouts, and errors across multiple services.
{{/usCountry}}Read More: What caused the Microsoft Azure outage? Tech firm says ‘We suspect that…’
Alaska Airlines is working on restoring services soon
Alaska Airlines confirmed in its statement that it is working “in coordination with our technology partners” to restore services as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, they have advised travelers to allow extra time at the airport check-in and counters.
Read More: Microsoft Azure outage: Users report issues with 365, Teams, Store, Entra
Impact of the outage on the aviation sector
For the aviation sector, the timing is particularly sensitive: online check-in, boarding-pass issuance, baggage tracking and flight-crewing logistics depend heavily on continuous IT service. Any lapse can lead to delays, passenger inconvenience and reputational risk.
Microsoft has stated that it has restricted changes to the AFD configuration and begun rolling back to the previous state while monitoring for recurrence of the faulty configuration. However, the company did not provide a firm timeline for the full restoration of services.