Budget carrier HK Express issued an “Important Travel Notice” at 06:30 on 14 November advising that while flight operations remain normal, delivery of itinerary changes, check-in reminders and boarding-pass emails may be delayed due to a global Microsoft 365 service outage affecting its email servers. The airline, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cathay Pacific, said SMS messaging and its mobile app remain unaffected. Customers are urged to monitor the “Manage Booking” portal or the HK Express app for real-time updates and to arrive at the airport with either a printed confirmation or the booking reference stored offline. For mobility managers the alert is a timely reminder to rely on multi-channel communications when moving staff on low-cost carriers: itinerary changes pushed solely by email may not reach travellers in time. Companies should encourage employees to enable push notifications in airline apps and to bookmark web-based boarding-pass retrieval pages. IT security teams should also note that cyber-criminals often exploit high-profile outages to launch phishing campaigns. HK Express reported a separate spike in fraudulent messages in October; corporates should remind travellers to verify any requests for payment or passport data. Although the Microsoft disruption is expected to be resolved within hours, HK Express says it will continue to post updates on its homepage and social-media channels. The carrier operates more than 50 daily departures to 24 Asian destinations, and any prolonged communications blackout could have cascading effects on airport check-in queues.
Source: HK Express
