PH banks, airlines back to normal
A sign is seen at the Microsoft headquarters on July 3, 2024 in Redmond, Washington. —Agence France-Presse
MANILA, Philippines — The banking and airline industries in the Philippines, which were directly affected by the global outage of tech giant Microsoft on Friday, had restored much of their operations by Saturday.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said on Friday night it had been monitoring the outage and required financial institutions under its supervision to “provide updates and activate their resilience and continuity plans.”
The BSP said, “The financial system remains resilient, with alternative channels and digital platforms available for individuals and businesses.”
READ: Microsoft users worldwide report outages affecting banks, airlines
Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), BDO Unibank, Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. (Metrobank) and state-owned Land Bank of the Philippines all said their digital channels were already restored by Friday night.
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The Manila International Airport Authority (Miaa) said operations at the country’s gateway, Ninoy Aquino International Airport, was “normalized” at 11 p.m. on Friday. But at least 45 domestic and international flights were canceled the next day, following the outage.
Article continues after this advertisementREAD: Cebu Pacific, Air Asia hit by Microsoft global outage
Eight local and international airlines were affected, according to Miaa—AirAsia, Cebu Pacific, Eithad, Jeju Air, Jetstar Asia, Jetstar Japan, Scoot and Hong Kong Express.
Cebu Pacific and its sister company Cebgo canceled 34 flights on Friday and 38 on Saturday.
Carmina Romero, the airline’s communications director, said on Saturday morning that flight operations would take some time to normalize.
‘Significant progress’
But by 1:30 p.m., Cebu Pacific said its technical teams had made “significant progress” in restoring its system.
AirAsia said its system was back online by 2 p.m. on Saturday, but added that there could still be “multiple delays and cancellations.”
At Davao International Airport, 1,400 passengers were stranded on Friday night due to flights affected by the outage.
But that number had dwindled to 39 by Saturday, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines. —with a report from Ian Nicolas P. Cigaral
