- The outage began at 9 a.m. PT due to Azure Front Door issues, prompting Microsoft to roll back configurations to restore service.
- Alaska Airlines directed passengers to airport agents for boarding passes as online systems were affected.
What happened: Azure outage affects global users and airlines
Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform experienced a significant outage on Wednesday morning, disrupting services for customers globally, including Alaska Airlines, Xbox users, and Microsoft 365 subscribers. The company reported that at 9 a.m. PT, Azure Front Door (AFD) began experiencing issues following what Microsoft suspects was an inadvertent configuration change.
To mitigate the impact, Microsoft blocked all changes to AFD services, including customer configuration changes, and initiated a rollback to the last known good configuration. By 12:22 p.m., the company stated that customers should start seeing improvements, with full mitigation expected within approximately four hours.
Alaska Airlines confirmed the outage affected their website and check-in systems. Passengers unable to check in online were advised to obtain boarding passes from airline agents. The airline expressed apologies for the disruption and thanked customers for their patience.
This outage follows a series of recent cloud disruptions, including last week’s AWS incident caused by a rare software bug, and a separate failure at Alaska Airlines’ own primary data centre, highlighting the growing reliance on cloud and hybrid infrastructure.
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Why it’s important
The incident underscores the critical role cloud platforms play in global operations. Companies increasingly depend on services like Azure for mission-critical functions, and even brief disruptions can impact customer experience, revenue, and operational efficiency.
For airlines and other organisations relying on hybrid infrastructures, the outage demonstrates the challenges of coordinating between internal systems and third-party cloud services. Microsoft’s response, including blocking configuration changes and rolling back to a stable state, reflects standard mitigation strategies for high-impact cloud incidents.
The event also highlights the competitive pressure on cloud providers to maintain reliability, particularly as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft compete to support enterprise-scale workloads. For customers, it reinforces the importance of contingency planning and hybrid solutions to minimise service interruptions when cloud providers face unexpected failures.
Overall, the Azure outage serves as a reminder of the fragility and interdependence of modern cloud-based services in a globally connected environment.
