MANILA — A widespread system outage affecting Microsoft's services led to the cancellation of 47 flights scheduled to depart from and arrive at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) on Saturday. The disruption, which impacted multiple airlines, significantly affected travel plans for thousands of passengers.
According to Philippines News Agency, the flights cancelled included multiple routes operated by Cebu Pacific, CebGo, Air Asia, and one international flight by United Airlines to San Francisco. The outage, stemming from technical issues at Microsoft reported late Thursday, was resolved by Friday, yet its repercussions continued to affect airline operations into the weekend.
Cebu Pacific, one of the airlines most affected, announced system downtimes on Friday, necessitating a shift to manual passenger check-in processes. The airline has offered affected passengers the options of free rebooking, refunds, or storing ticket values in a virtual CEB wallet to mitigate the inconvenience caused.
As the IT outage echoed globally, congestion and delays were also reported at other airports, including Davao International and Bicol International Airport. Local authorities, including the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, responded by augmenting manpower to manage the queues and assist travelers during this period of technical disruption.