Microsoft Outage: Air India, IndiGo Issue Alerts

A server failure that began Thursday has kept Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 services down in many countries for more than 12 hours, with no confirmed time for full recovery.

A large Microsoft outage has disrupted businesses, governments and airlines around the world, leaving millions without access to Outlook email and the Teams meeting tool. Indian airlines Air India, IndiGo and Akasa Air issued advisories to passengers on Friday, November 13, after the disruption affected their email handling. The airlines said flight operations were not affected.

What Happened

The outage started on Thursday, November 12, hitting thousands of users in the United States first, and then continued into Friday’s working hours in Asia and the Pacific. Microsoft said it was caused by a significant number of its servers becoming unavailable. It also said that restored servers were becoming unresponsive again. A report said failed server health checks were behind the disruption, and the company was still investigating the root cause.

The services affected include Outlook, Exchange Online, Teams, Microsoft 365 Copilot, parts of SharePoint, Defender for Office 365 and Intune. Features that do not depend on Exchange Online reportedly kept working. Microsoft is tracking the problem under two incident numbers on its service health dashboard, and both remained open in the latest reports.

How Big Is It

Outage reports reached 74 countries within about an hour, according to one report. At the peak, more than 120,000 users in the United States reported problems with Outlook on an outage tracker, and more than 45,000 reported problems with Microsoft 365. Thousands of reports also came from Singapore, India, Australia and Japan.

In Australia, the federal police and the intelligence agency were among the organisations affected, and some schools and courts began the day without email. Businesses in Australia could not print invoices. Bankers in Hong Kong also said they were locked out of email and Teams for the day. By Friday evening in Australia, Microsoft had admitted that its fixes were not working and had not given a time for full recovery.

Not a Cyberattack, Says Microsoft

Microsoft has ruled out an attack. Charles Lamanna, the company’s executive vice president for Copilot, Agents and Platform, said there was no indication that the outage was the result of malicious or cyber activity. Australia’s Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister Tony Burke said Microsoft told him the company did not believe it was dealing with a cyberattack. He also said the company had described something similar to the 2024 CrowdStrike incident, an update that has gone wrong. That comparison is his account, and Microsoft has not confirmed a faulty update as the cause. Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator is looking into the outage.

What Indian Airlines Said

Air India: Said it was closely monitoring the outage and had temporarily rerouted its emails to keep communication with passengers uninterrupted. It said its flight operations remained unaffected.
IndiGo: Said its email support services were impacted and that it might not be able to receive emails. It asked passengers needing urgent help to use its virtual assistant, 6E Skai, on its website or mobile app, and said all other support channels remained available. It said flight operations were not affected.
Akasa Air: Said its email support services were experiencing delays and advised passengers to use alternative communication channels for urgent assistance.

Passengers who need to contact an airline are advised to use the airline’s app, website or phone lines instead of email until services are restored.

A Pattern of Disruptions

The outage follows two earlier disruptions to Microsoft 365 this year, in January and in August. The January 22 incident knocked out Outlook, Teams, and other services for hours before Microsoft said it had been fixed. The latest outage is much longer than those, which has raised questions about how dependent businesses and governments are on a single provider’s cloud services.

What to Do for Now

Use alternative channels such as phone calls, messaging apps, or the company’s own app for urgent communication.
Check Microsoft’s service health page and its official status account for updates.
For travel, check your flight status on the airline’s app or website, and note that the advisories relate to email support and not to flights.

What to Watch Next

The key questions are when Microsoft fully restores service, what the confirmed root cause is, and whether the company explains why the first fixes failed. Companies and governments will also be watching for a post-incident report.