- Software firm rejects any malicious activity or cyberattack.
- Global outage enters second day after starting on Thursday.
- MS blames network capacity issue exposed by recent change.
WASHINGTON: Microsoft has said there is no indication that the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) nationwide ground stop is related to any of its services, as the technology giant struggled to restore a separate global outage that disrupted businesses, government agencies and millions of users.
“Microsoft has no indication that the FAA nationwide ground stop is related to the recent service disruption,” a company spokesperson said.
The clarification came after the FAA halted all departing flights across the United States on Friday following communications problems affecting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centres.
The aviation disruption prompted questions about a possible connection with Microsoft’s ongoing service outage, which had affected several of its widely used platforms since Thursday.
However, Microsoft said the two incidents were unrelated. US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin also dismissed a connection, describing them as “separate issues”.
The Microsoft outage affected a wide range of Microsoft 365 services, particularly those linked to Exchange Online, the company’s cloud-based email and scheduling platform.
Users reported problems accessing Outlook, Teams and Microsoft’s artificial intelligence assistant Copilot, disrupting email communications, virtual meetings and other workplace operations.
The disruption spread across several countries, affecting businesses, financial institutions and government agencies.
In the United States, the House of Representatives reported problems with its systems, while organisations in Australia, Japan, Singapore and the Philippines also experienced interruptions.
Australia’s intelligence agency and federal police were among the organisations affected. Singapore’s government technology agency reported email disruption, while the Philippines’ Supreme Court said some of its operations had been affected.
The impact also extended to financial and commercial operations. Some organisations resorted to alternative communication methods, including fax machines, while trading and corporate reporting activities faced delays.
Downdetector, which tracks user-reported service disruptions, recorded more than 130,000 reports of Outlook problems in the United States at the outage’s peak on Thursday. Reports also came from dozens of countries, although Microsoft did not disclose the total number of affected users.
Microsoft identifies technical problem
Microsoft said the disruption involved servers supporting Microsoft 365 services and was linked to an issue involving an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a subsequent network change.
The company initially struggled to restore normal operations, with some recovery measures failing to deliver the expected improvements.
In subsequent updates, Microsoft said it was seeing signs of stabilisation and improving capacity as engineers continued working to restore affected services.
The company apologised to customers and said the incident was not related to malicious activity, a cyberattack or artificial intelligence.
“We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners,” Microsoft said in an update, adding that it would publish a full post-incident report after completing its review.
FAA investigates separate communications failure
The Microsoft disruption coincided with a separate aviation crisis in the United States, where the FAA ordered a nationwide ground stop for departing flights on Friday.
The agency said communications problems were affecting multiple Air Route Traffic Control Centres, prompting it to halt departures as a safety precaution.
US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said FAA technicians were investigating the failure.
Mullin said there was no immediate indication that the aviation disruption was a deliberate attack, although officials had not ruled out a possible cyberattack.
The incidents have renewed attention to the vulnerability of critical services to technical failures and the widespread reliance of businesses and public institutions on interconnected digital infrastructure.
The FAA’s investigation into the cause of the aviation communications failure remained separate from Microsoft’s efforts to restore its services.
