Flights from Bucharest airport impacted by Microsoft outage

Officials from the National Airports Company Bucharest announced on Friday, July 19, that several flights scheduled to operate from Henri Coandă Airport in Bucharest have also been affected by the major service outage reported by Microsoft.

Some of the affected flights were headed to Abu Dhabi, Bologna, Tenerife, and Memmingen, and all experienced long delays, News.ro reported. Flights to Dortmund, Basel, and Bari were in a similar position. Most were operated by Wizz Air.

According to Hotnews.ro, Eurowings also encountered issues at Otopeni Airport, and so did Ryanair and Turkish Airlines.

In an official statement, Wizz Air urged customers to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours before their scheduled flights on Friday.

“We advise passengers to arrive at the airport at least 3 hours before their scheduled departure time to allow sufficient time for check-in, security control, and airport-specific health and safety procedures. We thank you for your understanding as we deal with the effects of the global IT systems outage,” the company said.

“Potential disruptions are expected due to ongoing third-party global IT system outage. Like all airlines today, Wizz Air is facing extreme technical challenges with the outage of 3rd party global IT systems. Wizz Air customers may experience disruptions across the network with website and mobile application services temporarily unavailable,” is added.

The Irish carrier Ryanair and the Dutch KLM made similar requests of their passengers across Europe.

Wizz Air also said that its website, mobile application, booking system, online check-in system, and display of boarding passes are currently not available. New reservations and changes to existing ones are also not available. Instead, during the outage, free airport check-in is available.

Microsoft reported a major service outage of its Microsoft 365 services on Friday, affecting businesses and users worldwide.

“We are investigating an issue affecting users’ ability to access various Microsoft 365 applications and services,” the American multinational announced in a statement released in the morning.