Microsoft says it has no indication that the FAA ground stop was related to its service disruption on Thursday, GeekWire reports.
The company's statement supports Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who told a White House news conference on Friday 13 November that the two were unconnected. According to GeekWire, Mullin raised the Microsoft outage himself at the start of the news conference.
"I want to make sure everybody understands that there is no connection between this and Microsoft."
NBC reports that three senior officials also saw no link.
Thursday's Microsoft outage affected Xbox sign-ins, saves and Cloud Gaming and disrupted rail operations in Germany, Notebookcheck reports.
Mullin's claim is now backed by Microsoft itself. This is a company statement rather than a technical finding, however. It does not explain what caused the FAA's communications problem.