By AFP and published by CNA
WASHINGTON: Microsoft on Friday (Nov. 13) apologised for a global outage that disrupted public services and businesses around the world, as it reported a “broad recovery” for Outlook email and other services.
The company ruled out any malicious “cyber or AI” activity as the cause of the outage, which affected several Microsoft products and disrupted health care services, delayed corporate earnings reports and left schools struggling to communicate.
“We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners,” Microsoft said on X, adding that full services were still being restored after the outage started on Thursday.
“We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services. This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI/ agents.”
The disruption knocked out Microsoft products in 74 countries and territories, affecting users across the Americas and parts of Europe, Asia and Africa, according to the outage tracker Downdetector.
A top UK trade union said the disruptions had a “serious impact” on the country’s health care service.
National Health Service staff receiving emergency calls were “unable to refer patient details in the normal way”, creating a massive backlog, said Rachel Harrison, public services head at the GMB union.
As the outage dragged on for hours, airlines in India warned that customer queries may not be getting through.
IndiGo and Akasa Air both said on X that their email support services had been affected and that they may not be able to receive customers’ emails.
Immigration New Zealand said the disruption had forced a halt in the processing of all visa applications.
“Significant impact”
Japan’s economy, trade and industry minister Ryosei Akazawa warned of a “significant impact” of the outage as the Microsoft products were used by a “vast number of people.”
In London’s financial district, several people interviewed by AFP said the outage exposed their dependence on Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant.
“I think one of the biggest things is Copilot not working,” said Yashmit Sharma, 26, an auditor. “I think this was the main bummer. And Outlook as well, of course.”
Sheera, 40, a risk manager at a mid-sized bank, said businesses needed to be better prepared for unexpected technology failures.
“I think we need to be a little bit more careful,” said Sheera, declining to give her last name. “Anything can happen: you wake up and Outlook is not working and it’s the main communication we use for our global team.”
The Australian Computer Society (ACS) called for a national review of sovereign IT risk, with CEO Prins Ralston saying that small businesses may not have a workaround when Outlook fails.
“We need to know the systems that keep this country running won’t simply fall over without notice,” Ralston said, according to ACS publication Information Age.
On Thursday, Microsoft attributed the disruption to “elevated load” on its infrastructure.
In an updated statement on Friday, it said the “incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change.”
“We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions.”
Reports of problems on Downdetector had begun to decline by 9 a.m. GMT (4 p.m,, Thailand time).
Microsoft initially said it was investigating outage reports “in the Americas”, but later confirmed that the issue apparently affected “Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region”.
Microsoft 365 is the company’s cloud-based subscription service that includes popular applications such as Outlook and Teams.
All departing US flights grounded due to communications problem
In an unrelated development United States air regulators on Friday (Nov. 13) issued a rare nationwide ground stop for all departing flights, citing a communications problem affecting air traffic control towers, in a move that caused immediate confusion for travellers.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) “issued a nationwide ground stop for all US airports following a communication issue impacting all Air Route Traffic Control Centers”, the agency said.
“FAA technicians are investigating the issue.”
The FAA has announced similar orders in recent years on individual airlines due to communications issues, usually lasting a couple of hours or less. Systemwide groundings nationwide are far less common.
In January 2023, the FAA called a nationwide ground stop due to problems with the Notice to Air Missions system (NOTAM), which provides information to pilots about hazards, changes to airport facilities and information that can affect flights.
That outage lasted just under two hours and was thought at the time to be the first nationwide grounding since 9/11.
Friday’s FAA order came a day after US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy formally asked Congress for US$30.1 billion in funds to upgrade and modernise the US Air Traffic Control System.
“This investment is critical to complete the modernisation of our national airspace – delivering a resilient telecommunications backbone for air traffic controllers, modern hardware and software, state-of-the-art control towers, and world-class airport infrastructure,” Duffy and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought wrote in a letter to lawmakers.
At Las Vegas airport, the Southwest Airlines check-in desk told passengers there would be no flights taking off for 24 hours.
No indication of threat
US Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin said there was no indication the country was under threat.
But Mullin told reporters at the White House after meeting President Donald Trump that authorities were still investigating – and did not rule out a possible cyberattack.
“There was no indication, as of yet, that this was a nefarious attack against us, it’s just a telecommunications outage, as of right now,” Mullin said.
“This isn’t another 9/11. I just can’t repeat that enough.”
But asked if a cyberattack could eventually be found to be responsible, Mullin said officials were “not ruling out anything at this point”.
The homeland security chief said, however, that he did not believe the air traffic stop was linked to a huge global Microsoft outage that affected public services around the world.
“I don’t see any reason to connect those two at all. Those are separate issues,” Mullin said.
Mullin added that “every flight has been accounted for” and said incoming international flights would be handled on a “case-by-case basis.”
But he said the situation could “take some time” to be fixed. “This isn’t going to just be resolved and turned around within the hour,” he added.
CAPTIONS:
Top and Front Page: Microsoft, Teams, Outlook and Copilot logos are seen in this illustration taken on Nov. 13, 2026. Photo: Reuters/Dado Ruvic and published by CNA
Insert: The air traffic control tower at Chicago O’Hare International Airport is pictured on the day passengers board their flights for the Thanksgiving holidays, in Chicago, Illinois, US, on Nov. 26, 2025. File photo: Reuters/Jim Vondruska and published by CNA
Earlier report:
Microsoft scrambles to solve global outage but says fixes not going ‘as expected’
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