Aena has started to recover some of its systems after suffering the effects of the Microsoft crash, which was affecting, above all, check-in and passenger information points, as announced through its X profile. All airports are operational but some processes operate more slowly. The day's schedule is being adhered to, albeit with some delays. Some airlines are rescheduling their operations. The situation at Palma airport has been chaotic and thousands of passengers are seeing their travel plans altered.
The airports in the Balearics were scheduled to operate 1,650 flights this Friday, arrivals and departures, throughout the day, in which delays are expected due to the worldwide failure of the Microsoft system. According to Aena's forecast, Palma airport will handle 997 flights, Ibiza airport 463 flights, and Menorca airport 190 flights.
What has happened?
On Friday morning there were huge queues at check-in counters and problems in other areas of the airport, the source of the problem - which has affected air traffic in numerous countries - seemingly lying with the Navitare platform which uses Amadeus, the network that airlines worldwide use to manage different operational processes. Navitare has been affected by a generalised failure of a Microsoft cloud service, Azure.
One passenger, in a check-in queue for ninety minutes, said that operations were being done manually "I've been in line for an hour and a half for them to now put a tag on my luggage without any information. They must think we are stupid. My suitcase is going to get lost no matter what!".
Spain's major banks are not being affected ‘for the moment’ by the global downtime of part of Microsoft's services, nor are card payments in Spain, according to Redsys, the platform that serves as an intermediary for a large part of payments, including online payments.