Flights cancelled and delayed worldwide due to Microsoft global outage

Airports, airlines and other companies worldwide have been impacted by the global outage of Microsoft systems on the 18th and 19th of July 2024. Was your flight grounded, cancelled or delayed? Find information about your rights as an air passenger below.

What are my rights if my flight was cancelled or delayed due to the Microsoft outage?

Firstly, you can claim a monetary ticket refund in certain circumstances.

• If your flight was cancelled and the airline is not able to find you another flight, you can claim a full monetary refund of what you paid for the ticket.
• You can also request a ticket refund if your flight was delayed by at least 5 hours and you do not want to take this flight anymore.

What about flight compensation for the Microsoft outage? Our team of air passenger rights experts is still reviewing the situation. However, for now, we believe that this case will likely fall under the category of the so-called “extraordinary circumstances”. This means that passengers won’t be entitled to compensation, because it’s not the airlines that are at fault for the issue.

However, in normal circumstances, passengers would be entitled to up to 600 euro of compensation if their flight was delayed by at least 3 hours or cancelled at the last minute (within the last 14 days prior to the planned departure).

Can I claim flight compensation if my flight was impacted by the Microsoft outage?

If you have issues with receiving a ticket refund from the airline or want to submit a claim for flight compensation, you can do it via our website. While it’s at the moment not 100% clear if flight compensation for Microsoft global outage will be possible, you can still submit a claim through our service. 

We operate on a no win, no fee basis which is 100% risk-free for you: if the situation doesn’t enable compensation, we will just drop your case free of charge. On the contrary, if you are eligible for flight compensation, we will continue fighting for your rights up until you receive compensation on your bank account. 

Remember that you can also submit a claim and try claiming compensation for past delayed or cancelled flights. In some countries, you have up to 10 years to submit such a claim.

Could I be eligible for flight compensation following the Microsoft outage?

The abovementioned passenger rights apply to the following groups of air passengers:

• Passengers flying between EU countries (as well as the UK, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland)
• Passengers flying with EU/British airlines (also to outside of Europe)
• Passengers with a layover in an EU country (as well as the UK, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland)
• Passengers flying with non-EU airlines on flights that departed from the EU (as well as the UK, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland)

Microsoft global outage — what happened?

At night between the 18th and 19th of July (European time), Microsoft services experienced a global outage due to a new Crowdstrike update. This impacted virtually every industry in the world, and many companies. 

At the time of writing this news, many airports and airlines across the EU, the UK and the whole world are not operating due to several issues cause by the Microsoft outage. This includes flights getting grounded, not being able to process check-ins and luggaes, not being able to properly control flight movements, and more.

It’s not yet clear when the operations will go back to normal. Even if the Microsoft global outage gets fixed, companies still might need to do additional work on their systems internally. Flights delays and cancellations are to be expected throughout the whole 19th of July 2024.

Microsoft global outage — is my flight impacted ? 

Find your flight in our interactive flight status table below and start your refund or compensation claim in a few clicks! You only need your flight information and booking confirmation to get started. Remember, we operate on a no-win, no-fee basis: 100% risk-free for you.