Why flights are delayed at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport tonight
A global technical system outage affected several airlines’ operations on Thursday, July 18, leading to flight delays and cancellations at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and across the country.
Frontier Airlines and Sun Country Airlines posted on X that they were among the airlines affected by the outage.
As of 8:15 p.m. Arizona time Thursday, 23 flights at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport were canceled and 341 were delayed, according to FlightAware.
Frontier posted on X that a major Microsoft outage was affecting booking, check-in, boarding pass access and some flights. An airline spokesperson told The Arizona Republic it issued a ground stop for its flights, which has since been lifted, because of the outage and is working with outside vendors to restore normal operations.
Why were flights canceled and delayed at Sky Harbor?
An outage affecting Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, hampered airlines’ operations.
Multiple users reached out to Azure’s support account on X, @AzureSupport, for answers. The account issued this statement in response to user complaints: “Hi, thank you for reaching out. We are aware that some of you are experiencing issues at the moment. Our team is looking into it and working on a resolution.”
The Arizona Republic reached out to Microsoft for comment.
What airlines were affected by the Microsoft computer outage?
Most of the flights canceled Thursday evening in Phoenix were Frontier flights. FlightAware counted 17 canceled and 12 delayed Frontier flights at Sky Harbor.
The websites for Sun Country Airlines and Allegiant Air were not working Thursday evening, citing the Azure outage. As of 8 p.m. Thursday, Sun Country’s website was still offline, but Allegiant’s website was back in service. Sun Country had two delays and Allegiant had one flight delay out of Sky Harbor on Thursday.
Frontier’s website was working, though it displayed the message, “Our systems are currently impacted by a Microsoft outage, which is also affecting other companies. We appreciate your patience.”
According to Frontier and Sun Country’s statements, the outage affected customers’ ability to book new flights and check in for upcoming flights. This was affecting the airlines’ ability to operate flights as normal.
Southwest Airlines had the most delayed flights out of Sky Harbor on Thursday, with 165. Southwest Airlines’ customer service team shared on X that several of their flights, particularly in Las Vegas, were being impacted by extreme weather and air traffic control directives.
What if my flight was canceled?
Reach out to your airline if your flight was disrupted.
Check your flight status before heading to the airport.
Frontier Airlines stated passengers whose flights were affected by the outage can request refunds.
Michael Salerno is an award-winning journalist who’s covered travel and tourism since 2014. His work as The Arizona Republic’s consumer travel reporter aims to help readers navigate the stresses of traveling and get the best value for their money on their vacations. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @salerno_phx.
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