Amazon cloud outage disrupts airline check-in and apps

Published on Oct 20, 2025, 8:03 am CDT

3 min read

Key points

AWS outage began overnight, hit US-EAST-1 region
United and Delta customers reported check-in problems
AWS says the DNS issue was mitigated by early morning
Expect lingering throttling and slowdowns
Save boarding passes and arrive earlier today

Impact

Airports: Short, uneven morning lines as some kiosks and bag drops recovered in waves.
Flights: No nationwide ground stop from FAA tied to AWS, but isolated departure delays possible from manual processing.
Travelers: If your airline app fails, screenshot your pass, use email or kiosk reprint, and pad arrival time by 30-45 minutes.
Outlook: AWS reports mitigation, yet brief throttling may persist this morning as backlogs clear.

A widespread Amazon Web Services outage early on October 20 disrupted hundreds of internet services and briefly rippled into air travel. Travelers for major U.S. carriers, including United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, reported problems checking in, pulling mobile boarding passes, and dropping bags. Amazon attributed the disruption to a DNS issue concentrated in its US-EAST-1 region. AWS began investigating around 211 a.m. Central, noted broad recovery by about 427 a.m., and said the issue was fully mitigated around 5:35 a.m. Central. Residual throttling may continue as systems clear queued requests.

AWS outage and airline systems

Amazon's status updates and industry reporting point to DNS resolution failures affecting the DynamoDB endpoint in US-EAST-1, a hub region many apps depend on. When that layer falters, airline web and mobile systems that rely on the same cloud can slow or time out, which explains sporadic check-in failures and missing reservations in apps. Media monitoring this morning captured customer reports that some bag-drop stations and kiosks could not retrieve bookings until systems recovered. By mid-morning, AWS indicated most service operations were succeeding, with throttling possible while backlogs processed.

Analysis

For travelers, the immediate risk is digital dependency. Airline apps, self-service kiosks, and bag-drop stations all pull from cloud-hosted back ends. When the cloud hiccups, lines lengthen as staff switch to manual workarounds. If you fly today, save boarding passes to your wallet when issued, keep the email PDF as a fallback, and bring a physical ID ready for manual lookup. If the app spins at the curb, head inside to a staffed counter or a functioning kiosk bank. Build a 30 to 45-minute buffer above your normal early-arrival routine, especially at large hubs during morning and late-afternoon banks.

Airlines already invest in redundancy, including multi-region architectures and on-premise caches for core functions like boarding and bag tagging. Still, concentration in one hyperscale region can create uneven outages. Expect carriers to review regional failover and offline-mode processes after today's incident. Travelers benefit most from simple prep: early check-in, offline pass storage, and flexible payment for bags if a kiosk cannot read a reservation immediately.

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Final thoughts

An AWS DNS issue in US-EAST-1 briefly knocked airline apps and check-in off balance on October 20, then stabilized by early morning. Keep travel basics in place today, including offline boarding passes and extra buffer time. Cloud hiccups happen; preparation reduces stress when a future Amazon cloud outage touches air travel again.