The Central government on Saturday said that airline systems at airports across the country are returning to normal, a day after a global computer outage caused widespread disruptions. Airports witnessed chaotic scenes on Friday after several flights were either delayed or cancelled. Efforts were underway to clear the backlog. Meanwhile, here are some of the top updates:
Air India unaffected
“We confirm that none of the Air India flights on 19 July were cancelled on account of the worldwide outage of travel systems, though there were some delays due to the impact of the outage on airport services. Air India’s own, resilient IT infrastructure remained unaffected yesterday and continues to function as normal,” an Air India Spokesperson was quoted as saying by ANI.
Govt Constantly monitoring
In a statement, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said, “Since 3 AM in the night, Airline systems across airports have started working normally. Flight operations are going smoothly now. There is a backlog because of disruptions yesterday, and it is getting cleared gradually. By noon today, we expect all issues to be resolved.” “We are constantly monitoring the operations at our airports and also with the airlines ensuring travel readjustments and refunds are taken care of. We thank you for your patience,” it added.
Hundreds of Flights Affected
Several airports in India, including Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Hyderabad, encountered issues with issuing boarding passes as IndiGo flights experienced cancellations and rescheduling. Airlines indicated that while departures and arrivals were gradually resuming
Three major airlines in India, namely Indigo, Akasa, and SpiceJet, faced significant disruptions recently. While Akasa and SpiceJet managed to avoid cancellations, Indigo bore the brunt with approximately 200 flights canceled yesterday and around 95 flights canceled today.
Overall, about 250 flights were affected on Friday due to operational challenges. Budget carrier Akasa Air said late on Friday it “successfully” navigated a daylong system outage due to the Microsoft Azure technical issue that affected operations across the global aviation industry.
What Happened on Friday
In one of the biggest-ever IT outages, an update of a product offered by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered problems with Microsoft’s Windows across the planet, hitting operations at financial sector companies and airlines while hospital operations got postponed and some television channels went off air. In India, it led to the crashing of airline check-in systems, causing delays and cancellation of dozens of flights. IndiGo alone cancelled around 200 flights. Hundreds of other flights got delayed as bookings, check-in and boarding moved to manual mode.
From Delhi To Chennai
Airports from Chennai to Delhi witnessed chaotic scenes as harried passengers argued with airline staff over either not informing about delays and cancellations or not giving them alternate flights. Web check-in services were not available, leading to long queues at check-in counters and over-crowded lounges at several airports. IndiGo, Akasa Air, Vistara, Air India, SpiceJet and Air India Express posted messages on X saying they were facing issues.
Passengers were issued hand-written boarding passes and the entire process of doing manual ticketing as well as passenger and luggage check-in took 30-40 minutes per person, some travellers said. According to preliminary data put out by aviation analytics firm Cirium on the global IT disruption in the afternoon, 56 out of 3,652 flights scheduled from Indian destinations were cancelled.
Impact
Services like bookings, check-ins and boarding moved to manual mode and took longer than expected time. This led to long queues at airports, passengers, including those who were travelling due to some emergency reasons, were seen complaining about the lack of information about their flights.
The impact was more on passengers flying out of high-density airports like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai. “A global outage with the Navitaire Departure Control System (DCS) has been affecting operations of some airlines across their network, including BLR Airport since 10:40 IST on July 19, 2024. Indigo, Akasa, and SpiceJet in T1 and Air India Express in T2 are among the impacted airlines,” a Bengaluru airport spokesperson said.
The Common Use Terminal Equipment and Common Use Self Service systems also experienced disruptions, the airport operator said, adding that in response to this situation, IndiGo, Air India Express, SpiceJet, and Akasa have taken proactive measures by initiating manual check-ins to ensure minimal disruption to passengers and flight schedules.
(With agency inputs)
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