Microsoft 365 Outage Hits Airline Emails: Cathay Flights Normal, SpiceJet Cancellation Cause Disputed

In short, this has not shut down airlines the way the 2024 CrowdStrike incident did. It has made it harder for some airlines to reach passengers by email, and that matters when you're trying to find out whether your flight is still on.

What broke at Microsoft​

The scale is large. The Associated Press, in a story carried by Yahoo Finance, said the outage affected a wide range of Microsoft 365 services including Outlook, Teams and AI assistant Copilot, and left many people unable to get into their email. The same report said the disruption had spread beyond offices to police emergency calls, court operations and AI tools.

Here is how it unfolded, based on reporting so far:

• Start: NBC News said the outage began at about 12:50 p.m. ET on Thursday, when hundreds of thousands of people started reporting Outlook email problems.
• First acknowledgment: ABC News reported that Microsoft first posted on social media that it was "investigating reports of users experiencing issues" accessing online mailboxes shortly before 1 p.m. ET Thursday.
• Peak reports: The AP said more than 130,000 users reported problems on Thursday, and although reports fell later, many people around the world were still having trouble. Downdetector counts are complaints from users. They don't measure how many people were actually affected.
• Friday morning: TechRadar's live blog said that at 08:37 UTC the problem was still unresolved, with Down Detector still showing over 40,000 reports of issues.
• Services affected: When Microsoft's status page came back, TechRadar reported that it listed Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Copilot 365 and Microsoft Defender XDR as potentially affected.

Microsoft says recovery is happening, but unevenly. ABC News quoted the company as "seeing early stabilization and capacity improvements as recovery actions continue." CNN reported that Microsoft had described the uneven pace of recovery in different regions. The BBC, as cited by Simple Flying, quoted Microsoft saying Japan was comparatively more stable and North America was improving, while some users could still see intermittent problems.

On whether this was an attack: NBC News reported Microsoft said the incident was not the result of any "malicious" activity. CNN added that Microsoft would continue to treat the incident "with urgency and priority until full resolution." The full root cause has not been published. Anyone who tells you exactly what failed is guessing.

Summary: This was a global Microsoft 365 failure that lasted more than a day and hit Exchange Online hardest. Microsoft says it was not a cyberattack and that recovery is under way, but it has not declared the incident resolved.

SpiceJet: flights cancelled, cause disputed​

This is the airline story that got the most attention, and it is also where readers should be most careful.

News9 Live reported that SpiceJet cancelled three Friday-morning departures from Delhi, to Pune, Leh and Mumbai, and said this was because of issues linked to the Microsoft outage. It also reported two delayed flights, Delhi–Darbhanga and Delhi–Mumbai. Simple Flying, citing Travel Mole, also called SpiceJet the Indian airline most directly affected.

Simple Flying went further. It cited a FlightAware count of 22 SpiceJet cancellations for the day and named flights SG476, SG603, SG186, SG939, SG121 and SG123 on the Mumbai, Pune and Leh routes over November 12 and 13. Those live-tracking numbers had not been independently confirmed when this article was written, and daily counts like these change throughout the day.

The other side matters. Other Indian reporting on the same three Delhi cancellations put them down to "operational reasons" and the airline's own difficulties, without mentioning Microsoft. No report has explained how an email and collaboration outage would ground SpiceJet aircraft. Flight operations normally run on systems such as crew scheduling, load planning and departure control, which are separate from Outlook. Some airlines do use Microsoft tools inside those workflows, though, so a link is possible. It just hasn't been shown. SpiceJet's cancellations happened while Microsoft was down. That alone doesn't prove the outage caused them.

Other Indian airlines: advisories and email workarounds​

• Air India: According to News9 Live, Air India said its flight operations were unaffected and that it had temporarily rerouted its email traffic so passengers kept receiving messages, with replies still going out within its usual 24-hour window. This is a good example of email continuity planning working as intended.
• IndiGo and Akasa Air: Both told passengers to keep checking for flight updates. Simple Flying reported that both airlines' email support lines were affected, and it published delay and cancellation figures for both. Those figures had not been independently confirmed. IndiGo's figure of five cancellations is, as Simple Flying itself noted, about what a large airline sees on an ordinary day.
• Delhi Airport: It issued its own advisory telling travellers to check their flight status before leaving for the airport.

Cathay Pacific and Scoot: flights normal, emails at risk​

Cathay Pacific's position is easy to state. Its flights kept running, but it posted a website notice warning that "some customers using Microsoft services may not receive flight notification emails." According to the airline's notice, it was issuing digital boarding passes through its app, by SMS and by email. It told customers to update their contact details in Manage Booking and to check flight status on its website or app before travelling.

Simple Flying reported that Singapore budget airline Scoot posted a similar Facebook update. Scoot said customers could face longer response times and might not receive notification emails, but that all flights were operating as scheduled.

Cathay's wording points to the risk on the receiving end. The warning is aimed at passengers whose own email runs on Microsoft. If your Outlook.com or Exchange Online mailbox can't receive mail, a gate change sent by email won't reach you, however well the airline's systems are working.

Outside Asia, Simple Flying cited the BBC as reporting that Liverpool and Manchester airports were operating normally. North American and European aviation appeared largely unaffected.

Summary: For most airlines, the visible problem was getting messages to passengers, not getting planes in the air.

Why this isn't another CrowdStrike, at least so far​

The comparison with July 2024 is understandable, but the two events are very different. CrowdStrike pushed a faulty update to Windows machines and crashed them, which took down airline systems directly. This incident is a failure in Microsoft's cloud services. It hit email and collaboration tools, not the operating systems running at check-in desks.

Simple Flying also recalled what followed in 2024: Delta sued CrowdStrike and faced counterclaims, and Southwest was largely unaffected because it was still running much older systems. Old infrastructure got lucky that day, but that shouldn't be treated as a resilience strategy.

What travellers and IT admins should do​

If you're flying in the next day or two:

1. Check your flight status in the airline's app or on its website before you leave home, and don't rely on email.
2. Make sure your booking has a mobile number on it so SMS alerts can reach you.
3. Download your boarding pass in the app if the airline offers it.
4. If your personal email is on Outlook.com or a work Exchange account, assume airline messages may arrive late or not at all.

If you run IT for an organisation that depends on customer email:

• Do what Air India did and keep a tested secondary mail route or provider ready so outbound customer notifications aren't tied to a single platform.
• Don't make email the only way you notify customers. Add SMS, app push notifications or both.
• Keep a status channel that doesn't depend on Microsoft. TechRadar noted that Microsoft's own status page was unreachable for part of this incident, and Microsoft's status account was posting updates on X.
• After the incident, go through your disaster recovery plan honestly. TechRadar's live blog put it bluntly: "'Disaster plans' are being tested."

The airlines that kept their messages flowing had a backup channel ready before Microsoft went down.