U.S. Airlines Outage: How Amazon AWS Disrupted Delta, United

(UNITED STATES) A major AWS outage on October 20, 2025 disrupted digital tools used by U.S. airlines, with the heaviest impacts reported by Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, and issues also noted at Southwest. For several early-morning hours, airline websites, mobile apps, and airport self-service kiosks suffered intermittent failures that blocked online check-in, boarding pass retrieval, and seat assignment access.

Passengers posted long lines and missing reservations at airports from Dallas to Chicago and Newark as staff shifted to manual processing. While there was no nationwide FAA ground stop and no mass cancellations tied directly to the outage, the digital slowdown created airport delays and confusion as the morning push began.

Immediate airline responses and airport effects

United told customers a “system glitch affecting our online tools” was in play and urged travelers to check in at the airport if the app or website failed. Delta said teams were working to restore normal operations and asked travelers to allow extra time. Airports reported backups at automated bag drops where systems could not confirm reservations or payment for checked bags, pushing people to staffed counters.

The incident began in AWS’s US-EAST-1 region, where a DNS resolution failure hit core services, including DynamoDB, according to AWS updates shared with clients. AWS said it saw “significant signs of recovery” by 5:27 a.m. ET, but airlines still faced residual slowdowns, backlogs in processing, and stranded app sessions as the morning rush peaked. The outage rippled beyond aviation into other industries, though airlines’ consumer-facing platforms made the problem especially visible to travelers.

Passenger impact and scenarios

When mobile apps fail, travelers can’t easily pull up e-tickets, update passport details, or rebook after a missed connection. Families split across reservations may lose track of seat assignments or see partial records, increasing stress at check-in counters. Business travelers with tight connections risk losing their place in security or immigration lines while they wait for manual assistance.

Although flight operations largely continued, the digital breakdown tested airlines’ readiness for cloud service failures and pushed many to fallback tools that move more slowly. Delta and United customers described error messages, frozen screens, and references disappearing from their digital wallets. Some reported that bag tags printed at kiosks would not scan, or that the system no longer recognized their paid seat upgrades.

According to analysis by VisaVerge.com, the outage exposed a fragile dependency on third-party infrastructure that now underpins routine steps like mobile check-in and automated baggage acceptance, which most travelers have come to expect as standard.

Airports reverted to paper and manual processes to keep flights moving, but longer lines and slower processing multiplied passenger stress and created downstream effects at security and passport control.

Airport and border implications

Airport agents reverted to manual check-in and paper backup processes. That helped keep flights moving but lengthened lines. In large hubs, a few minutes per passenger adds up fast. Staff had to verify itineraries, passport validity, and visa or travel authorization notes without the usual automated cross-checks.

That slowdown can spill over to security and, for international departures, to airline compliance with document screening rules before passengers board. For inbound international flights, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processes were not reported as affected by the AWS outage. Still, longer check-in lines at origin airports can push arrivals into different time bands, creating surges at passport control.

Travelers who anticipate delays can check projected arrival queues at CBP using the agency’s published wait-time tools. The official CBP resource is available here: CBP Airport Wait Times. While CBP systems are separate from airline apps, schedule shifts caused upstream by airline check-in problems can change the cadence of arrivals that CBP officers see at inspection booths.

Airlines warned customers to arrive 30–45 minutes earlier than usual, especially if traveling with checked baggage or on international routes. Passengers were told to save offline boarding passes when possible, take screenshots of booking references and seat assignments, and carry printed copies of key documents. Those steps help when app sessions fail or cloud-hosted records time out.

Guidance for travelers and airlines

What should travelers do when an outage like this hits mid-journey? Practical, low-tech steps can reduce stress:

• Save your boarding pass to your wallet app or take a screenshot while your app is working.
• Carry a printed copy of your itinerary and booking reference.
• Keep essential documents handy: passport, proof of visa or ESTA approval, and any onward or return flight proof if required.
• If the airline’s digital tools fail, go straight to a staffed counter and show proof of payment and any receipts for checked bags or seat upgrades.
• Build buffer time for international connections where you must re-clear security or immigration.

For immigrants, students, and workers on visas, a digital outage can compound routine worries. If your app drops your seat assignment or can’t show your reservation, a paper backup helps you assert your place in line and protects tight travel windows tied to visa appointment dates or program start times. If you miss a connection due to check-in delays, airlines typically rebook, but ask agents to reissue all onward boarding passes on paper at the counter before you leave.

From an airline operations standpoint, the event underscores a growing reliance on cloud services for customer-facing and behind-the-scenes workflows: check-in APIs, payment gateways, seat map services, and baggage systems often depend on databases and DNS paths hosted off-site. The AWS outage showed how a DNS failure in a single region can jam multiple downstream processes at once.

Airlines with stronger cross-region redundancy and offline-capable tools for kiosks and agent desktops recovered faster, according to airport staff accounts.

Historical context and industry response

The industry also remembers July 2024, when a global software malfunction unrelated to AWS forced Delta to cancel more than 5,000 flights, with losses topping $500 million. That crisis disrupted flight operations directly. By contrast, the October 2025 AWS outage primarily undercut digital services. Flights mostly operated, but customers struggled to access them.

The contrast matters for planning: operational continuity can remain intact even as digital channels fail, yet the customer experience still suffers widely without quick manual workarounds.

United and Delta say they’re reviewing performance and contingency steps to prevent repeat scenes. Southwest confirmed effects but did not publish extensive details on scope. Airlines did not announce compensation programs tied to the outage as of October 21, 2025, and AWS had not issued a full technical post-mortem.

For now, carriers continue advising customers to show up early, keep offline records, and seek help from airport staff if online tools fail.

Practical takeaway for immigration-focused travelers

For immigration-focused travelers to the United States 🇺🇸, the bottom line is simple: automate when it helps, but pack analog backups.

• Take a screenshot of your boarding pass and itinerary.
• Print a copy of your confirmation.
• Allow a small time cushion at departure to absorb delays.
• If connecting to another airline, ask the first carrier to confirm that bags are tagged to the final destination and to print all onward boarding passes.
• If your connection is tight, inform gate staff on arrival so they can assist with rebooking and, when possible, alert ground teams.

As the travel ecosystem grows more digital, outages will still happen. The test for airlines after this incident will be how they spread their risk across cloud regions, keep offline modes ready, and train airport teams to flip to manual plans without losing momentum. For travelers, calm, simple preparation—offline proofs, printed backups, and a bit of extra time—remains the best defense when a screen goes blank.