Several major US airlines, including Delta, United, and American Airlines, experienced a ground stop on Friday morning due to a communication issue, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The FAA confirmed the ground stop impacted all flights from these airlines, regardless of their destination. The duration of the hold remained unclear at the time of this report, but the FAA anticipated an update by 5 a.m. ET.
This grounding follows a separate incident on Thursday where a significant Microsoft outage caused delays and cancellations for Frontier Airlines. Thankfully, the ground stop for Frontier has since been lifted.
Earlier on Thursday, Frontier reported that its systems were impacted by the Microsoft outage, prompting them to offer refunds to affected passengers. Other airlines, including Allegiant and SunCountry, also experienced difficulties with online booking, check-in, and trip management functions.
The FAA further announced that all Allegiant flights would be grounded on Friday morning.
According to Microsoft’s Azure cloud software status report, the outage impacted some customers in the central United States around 6 p.m. ET, causing issues with service management operations and service connectivity or availability. Microsoft confirmed they identified the cause and are working on a fix.