Cloudflare outage: Major tech glitches in recent years

A global Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025, disrupted access to major internet platforms, impacting various sectors, including airlines. This incident marks the second significant internet disruption of the year, following an earlier malfunction of Amazon's AWS cloud services. The outage triggered a ripple effect, causing delays and cancellations for airlines, and disrupting everyday tasks such as changing airline tickets.

The Cloudflare incident joins a series of major tech outages in recent years. British Airways experienced a major computer system failure in May 2017, stranding 75,000 passengers. In June 2021, a widespread outage linked to US-based cloud company Fastly affected thousands of government, news, and social media websites. Similarly, server-related glitches at Akamai briefly took down websites of dozens of financial institutions and airlines in Australia and the United States.

The recent Cloudflare outage highlights the vulnerability of critical infrastructure and the potential for cascading disruptions across industries. Airlines, heavily reliant on internet-based systems for bookings, flight management, and passenger services, are particularly susceptible to such outages. The incident underscores the need for robust contingency plans and diversified infrastructure to mitigate the impact of future disruptions.

While Cloudflare has implemented a fix and resolved the immediate issue, the broader implications for businesses and consumers remain. The incident serves as a stark reminder of the interconnectedness of the digital world and the importance of ensuring the resilience of critical internet infrastructure. The aviation industry must learn from this event and take proactive steps to minimize the impact of future outages on their operations and passengers.

The outage also impacted other sectors including healthcare, shipping and finance. Companies are left dealing with backlogs of delayed and cancelled flights and medical appointments, missed orders and other issues that took days to solve.