Global tech outage slows travel at Philadelphia International Airport

PHILADELPHIA – Travelers in Philadelphia and around the world are experiencing widespread delays as part of a Microsoft outage that also disrupted banks, media outlets and companies around the world on Friday.

The FAA said the airlines United, American, Delta and Allegiant had all been grounded. Hoards of travelers crowded Philadelphia International Airport on Friday morning, with more than a dozen disruptions reported at the airport, and over 1,200 cancelations nationwide.

United, in a statement posted on X, said it will begin to resume “some” flights, but residual disruptions are expected throughout the day Friday. The airline said it has issued a waiver to make it easier for customers to change their travel plans via their website.

“Last night, Frontier had some issues impacting their flights and early this morning they seemed to be back up and running, but then it started hitting other airlines,” Heather Redfern, an airport spokesperson, told FOX 29. 

“American, Delta and United were in a ground stop earlier this morning, American went back to service at about 5 a.m., they are resuming their operations just like United but it will take time to get back up and running on a regular schedule.”

Redfern said the outage will cause a “snowball effect” as crews scramble to clear the logjam of flights, which she says could take days to resolve. The airport is urging travelers to keep tabs on flights through their airlines and still encouraging people to come to the airport despite the disruptions. 

“Definitely check with your airline first, if it doesn’t say anything, I would come to the airport,” Redfern said. “The lines are long, it might work itself out now that American and United are starting to come back to their operations.”

The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta on Friday morning.

Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

The company did not respond to a request for comment. It did not explain the cause of the outage further.

The Associated Press contributed to this report