Flight operations are slowly returning to normalcy after a widespread Microsoft outage severely disrupted airline schedules on Friday. The incident led to over 1,400 flight cancellations globally, with more than 200 flight cancellations in India alone. Airlines were forced to ground planes and reorganise schedules as they grappled with the fallout from the technical disruption. The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) had estimated that operations would get back to normalcy by Saturday afternoon meanwhile experts are pointing out that the operations might take even more time to get back to normalcy affecting more passengers.

The issue reportedly stemmed from a Microsoft Azure cloud service outage. MoCA has officially announced that the services will be back to normal by Saturday afternoon, the ministry said, “Since 3 am, airline systems across airports have started working normally. Flight operations are going smoothly now. There is a backlog because of disruptions on Friday, and it is getting cleared gradually. By noon today (Saturday), we expect all issues to be resolved.”