As it happened: Hong Kong airport says global Microsoft outage hit 5 airlines, officials ‘highly concerned’
- More than a dozen flights have been delayed due to major IT outage, with Deputy Chief Secretary Warner Cheuk to monitor situation
A global breakdown of Microsoft cloud computing services affected Hong Kong’s airport on Friday, forcing passengers to queue in long lines and check in manually.
The Airport Authority earlier said flight operations were not affected, but some airlines had “switched to manual check-in to continue serving passengers”.
“[The authority] has activated its emergency response mechanism in response to the situation,” a spokesman said.
He also suggested travellers “allow sufficient time to travel to the airport for check-in procedures and stay alert to updates”.
Hong Kong authorities said they were “highly concerned” over the outage and Deputy Chief Secretary Warner Cheuk Wing-hing had been assigned to monitor developments.
More than a dozen flights departing Hong Kong, including ones with HK Express, were delayed at one stage, the Airport Authority said. It said at 10pm that most affected flights had finished checking in passengers.
Microsoft said in a social media post it was investigating an issue affecting the ability of users to access various apps and services on its cloud-powered platform.
The outage has hit airlines and airport operators across the world, including those in Germany, Australia, New Zealand and India.
George Kurtz, president and CEO of American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, revealed on social media that its software update defect caused the outage for Windows hosts, although it did not affect those operating on Mac and Linux systems.
He denied it was a cyberattack or a security incident.
Follow the Post’s coverage of the outage at Hong Kong International Airport.
Reporting by Tom Shuai, Cannix Yau, Kahon Chan, Willa Wu, Denise Tsang, Harvey Kong, Ezra Cheung and Ng Kang-chung
