A global Microsoft Azure outage disrupted travel and key New Zealand websites, affecting payments and digital boarding for Air New Zealand and interrupting several public services that Coast commuters rely on.

Air New Zealand says the outage is impacting payments and digital boarding.

Parliament’s website is down, as are NZ Police and Auckland Transport.

Users reported issues throughout the day with Office 365, Xbox Live, Copilot, and other services on outage tracker Downdetector.

Internationally, the BBC reported problems at Heathrow, plus impacts for Minecraft, British supermarket Asda, and Starbucks in the United States.

Microsoft also warned Microsoft 365 users they may see delays with Outlook and other services.

What Coast residents may notice is a mix of airline disruptions, slower or unavailable government and transport websites, and interruptions to widely used Microsoft tools.

The disruption spans work, travel, gaming, and everyday online services, reflecting how many systems depend on Microsoft’s cloud.

Downdetector showed thousands of reports of issues with websites globally as the outage unfolded.

Reports cited impacts across Office 365, Minecraft, Xbox Live, Copilot, and many other services, indicating a broad footprint tied to Azure.

The situation affected both public-sector platforms and private companies.

Amazon is the dominant provider of cloud computing services in most markets, with Microsoft ranked second, ahead of Google. When a major cloud platform experiences an outage, the effects can appear across many unrelated services at once.

For Coasties, the immediate takeaway from today’s events is straightforward: Air New Zealand’s payments and digital boarding are affected, and several national websites and tools used for daily life and commuting experienced problems linked to the Microsoft Azure outage.

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