The UK-based media house, Sky News, was off-air for about three hours on Friday morning as part of a global Microsoft outage. Viewers were seeing stock footage before the channel displayed an apology message.
“We apologize for the interruption to this broadcast. We hope to restore the transmission of Sky News soon
Presenter Jacquie Beltrao posted a picture with her team on X to let viewers know: “We're obviously not on air—we're trying.”
Viewers replied, hoping the channel would go back on air. One wrote: “Have you tried switching it off and back on again? Hope you're back on air soon.” A second added: “Missing my Sky News fix this morning.
The Microsoft outage paralyzed activities users, flight operations, and media houses. Many flights were canceled or delayed, inconveniencing hundreds of travelers.
Akasa Airlines issued a statement that some online services at Mumbai and Delhi airports would not be available due to the outage, while IndiGo also reported the effect on its systems. SpiceJet indicated it was experiencing technical issues in providing flight updates.
Frontier Airlines of the US grounded flights for over two hours and blamed Microsoft's services for causing the problem.
Microsoft said the outage began at around 6 pm ET, and numerous Azure services in the Central US region are impacted. The company is investigating the cause of the issue, noting, “Aware of this issue and have engaged multiple teams…We have determined the underlying cause.”.
