On July 19, 2024, a massive IT outage caused widespread disruption all over the world. The cause of the outage was a failure in Microsoft’s cloud services and related apps. Various sectors, including aviation, healthcare, banking, and businesses, were severely affected as computers shut down or were unable to access networks. Several airports, such as those in India, the US, Australia, UAE, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, reported failures in their booking systems, forcing staff to check-in passengers manually.

Hours after the incident, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged that the issue was caused by an update from CrowdStrike that impacted IT systems around the world. He mentioned that the company is working with CrowdStrike to resolve the issue.

The incident led to a significant disruption in travel, which was the most visible consequence of the global outage. Passengers were left stranded as flights were delayed or canceled. The incident highlights the growing dependence on technology and the need to have backup systems in place to mitigate such incidents.