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Hawaiian Airlines warned customers today that a global outage tied to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform was affecting its website as thousands of users worldwide reported problems accessing services across industries, according to outage-tracking site Downdetector.com. The carrier posted an online advisory saying Microsoft’s outage had disrupted portions of its website and urged travelers to book flights and check in using direct links or its mobile app, adding, “We apologize for this inconvenience and hope to have our system restored as soon as possible. Mahalo.” Alaska Airlines separately reported a disruption to key systems, including its website, while Vodafone in the United Kingdom and London’s Heathrow Airport also cited impacts. Microsoft said the issue stemmed from a configuration change to a portion of Azure’s infrastructure. Beginning around 6 a.m. Hawaii time, customers and Microsoft services that rely on Azure Front Door, a cloud-based content and application delivery network, reported slowdowns, timeout errors and access failures. Azure acknowledged problems accessing the management portal and said it had taken steps to mitigate the impact. Reports on Downdetector fell steadily as service improved, dropping from a peak of more than 18,000 users reporting issues to about 3,299 by 7:27 a.m. Hawaii time. Reports tied to Microsoft 365 fell from nearly 11,700 to about 3,858 over the same period, though Downdetector cautioned the actual number affected may vary. Azure said most customers should be able to access the management portal now, though some endpoints, such as Marketplace, may still fail to load. The disruption followed last week’s Amazon Web Services outage, which snarled thousands of sites and apps, including Snapchat and Reddit. Analysts said the AWS failure was the largest internet interruption since last year’s CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled hospital, bank and airport systems, underscoring the vulnerability of interconnected cloud platforms. Alaska Airlines canceled more than 400 flights in a separate technology failure last week, disrupting travel for more than 49,000 passengers. The carrier said it was monitoring the current outage and would provide updates as systems stabilize. Shares of Alaska Airlines were down 2.2% in afternoon trading. The Star-Advertiser contributed to this report.
