A major global outage struck Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday, temporarily disrupting access to numerous websites and applications—including Amazon Prime, Perplexity, Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, Reddit, Hulu, Disney+, Signal, and Delta Air Lines.
According to Amazon’s maintenance site, the disruption caused “increased error rates” across multiple services. Engineers at the cloud computing subsidiary of Amazon worked urgently to restore full operations.
Data from Downdetector, which tracks online outages, showed that the incident also affected UK banks, mobile operators, WhatsApp, and Tinder, indicating the widespread reliance on AWS for backend infrastructure.
The issue originated in AWS’s US-East-1 region, based in northern Virginia, one of the company’s most critical infrastructure zones. AWS reported that it began detecting disruptions around 0711 GMT, and within two hours, systems started showing “significant signs of recovery.”
The outage underscored the global dependence on cloud infrastructure, with AWS powering millions of applications and enterprise systems worldwide. While service has been largely restored, the event renewed discussions around digital resilience, cloud redundancy, and cybersecurity preparedness in an increasingly cloud-reliant world.
