OngoingOutages & grid failures · Since 18 Nov 2025 · Last update 14 Nov 2026
Microsoft, US flights and Cloudflare: another run of major outages
A handful of companies and systems now sit under huge parts of daily life. When one fails, flights, email, payments and websites go down together. The pattern in 2025-26 is frequent, usually short but costly failures, rather than one single catastrophe.
Timeline
- Tech company says operations restored to all customers and regions affected by one of worst IT failures in years Microsoft has said its service has been fully restored after a massive outage that resulted in widespread...
- Tech company says operations restored to all customers and regions affected by one of worst IT failures in years Microsoft has said its service has been fully restored after a massive outage that resulted in widespread...
- Tech company says operations restored to all customers and regions affected by one of worst IT failures in years Microsoft has said its service has been fully restored after a massive outage that resulted in widespread...
- Tech company says operations restored to all customers and regions affected by one of worst IT failures in years Microsoft has said its service has been fully restored after a massive outage that resulted in widespread...
- Tech company says operations restored to all customers and regions affected by one of worst IT failures in years Microsoft has said its service has been fully restored after a massive outage that resulted in widespread...
- Tech company says operations restored to all customers and regions affected by one of worst IT failures in years Microsoft has said its service has been fully restored after a massive outage that resulted in widespread...
- On the afternoon of 13 November the FAA ordered a ground stop on departing flights at all US airports, citing communication problems affecting multiple air route traffic control centres. Aircraft already airborne continued, and international arrivals were handled case by case. Officials said there was no indication of anything malicious; the cause was still being investigated in the latest reports seen, and no restart time had been given. This is the first nationwide ground stop since January 2023.
- From the afternoon of 12 November a Microsoft 365 incident affected Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint and Copilot, with Downdetector reports from users in dozens of countries. Microsoft said servers had become unavailable and overloaded, found no indication of cyber or malicious activity, and reported gradual recovery with email queues nearing normal by midday on 13 November. Some users still saw intermittent problems and the underlying cause had not been fully disclosed.
- On 21 September a failed telecommunications circuit at the Philadelphia TRACON, with a backup line reportedly cut by construction crews, caused ground stops at JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, Philadelphia and smaller airports. About 8,400 US flights were delayed and 1,141 cancelled by midnight, though not all were linked to the outage. The cable was repaired that evening and ground stops lifted, with delays easing the next day.
- Microsoft acknowledged problems at 19:37 UTC on 22 January, and access was reported restored at 05:33 UTC the next day. Outlook, Defender and Purview were among the services affected, with external email failing for many users and about 15,000 Downdetector reports at the peak. Microsoft attributed it to part of its North American infrastructure not processing traffic as expected.
- On 18 November 2025 an internal configuration problem at Cloudflare produced widespread errors across many websites and apps, including X and ChatGPT. Cloudflare said a database permissions change doubled the size of a Bot Management feature file and exceeded software limits; its CEO said it was not a cyber attack and that engineers had first wrongly suspected a DDoS attack.
Be ready: Keep key phone numbers, documents and bank details somewhere that does not depend on one email or cloud service, such as a printed copy.
We summarise public reporting for general information and link to the original sources. In an emergency, follow guidance from the emergency services and your local authority.