NEW DELHI:
Airport systems across India were restored at 3am Saturday after a 17-hour global outage caused by a software fault in computers running MS Windows. However, a large backlog of cancelled and delayed flights, along with undelivered baggage, means full normalisation may take a couple of days.
“Flight operations are going smoothly now. There is a backlog because of disruptions, and it is getting cleared gradually.We are constantly monitoring the operations,” Union aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu said.
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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,” Naidu said.
According to aviation ministry data, around 3,000 domestic flights operated Thursday, but this number fell to 2,700 Friday – a decrease of over 300 flights, with IndiGo alone cancelling 273 flights (about 14% of its daily operations). The on-time performance of domestic flights was affected Friday due to slower manual processes.
IndiGo, Air India Express, Akasa, and SpiceJet, which use the affected operating system, experienced major delays. Vistara and Air India were also impacted due to some partners being on the downed server.
IndiGo assured passengers that its team was working round the clock to ensure swift delivery of delayed baggage. “We deeply regret the difficulties… In light of the recent global travel system outage, our team is continually putting in their best efforts and all our services are gradually being restored, including baggage handling,” IndiGo said.
The Microsoft outage had affected check-in systems used by Indian carriers, including IndiGo, Air India Group, Akasa and SpiceJet, from around 10.40am Friday. This led to manual processes such as hand-written boarding cards, no DigiYatra, security check stamping on boarding cards, non-functional displays at terminals, and long queues at airports.
Air India Express announced past Saturday noon: “The technical issues have been resolved, and we are now fully operational across all platforms. We can’t wait to have you on board.”
