Airline systems across airports working normally: Civil Aviation Minister

Airline systems across airports, affected by a global IT outage on Friday (July 19), have started working normally and all issues were expected to be resolved by noon, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said on Saturday (July 20).

The ministry is constantly monitoring the operations at airports and airlines to ensure travel readjustments and refunds are taken care of, he added.

"Since 3 am (Saturday), airline systems across airports have started working normally. Flight operations are going smoothly now," Naidu said in a statement.

Outage

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.

Airports across the country witnessed chaotic scenes after the online passenger booking, reservation and boarding systems turned to manual mode due to the outage, resulting in higher passenger handling processing time and consequently hundreds of flights were delayed and many cancelled.

There is a backlog because of disruptions on Friday, and it is getting cleared gradually, according to the statement.

'All issues to be resolved by noon'

"By noon today, we expect all issues to be resolved," the minister said earlier in the day.

The reservation and check-in systems of most of the airlines, including IndiGo, SpiceJet, Akasa and Air India Express, are now operational, according to a source.

"I am going to Ahmedabad. Online printing (Digi Yatra) is convenient, which wasn't happening yesterday. Everything's fine today. Flights are on time. What happened yesterday was a network issue. No one can do anything about that," said a passenger at Delhi Airport.

"The global outage that led to operational difficulties is nearly resolved, and our teams have made significant progress in restoring normal operations. However, customers may still experience delays and schedule disruptions over the weekend," budget carrier IndiGo said.

Airlines hit by snag

IndiGo, the largest airline by domestic market share, operating over 2,000 daily flights, had to cancel around 200 flights due to the Microsoft outage issue.

The two other carriers SpiceJet and Akasa Air said late on Friday evening that all their systems at airports, including ticket bookings, were up and running.

SpiceJet said "all its systems at airports, ticket bookings and call centres are up and running smoothly after a successful resolution of a Microsoft outage that impacted the aviation industry all through the day".

"While the global systems downtime of reservations, check-in and boarding systems posed an unprecedented operational challenge to our ground services team, Akasa Air confirms that all its scheduled flights on Friday operated with minimum disruptions and nil cancellations," the airline said. 

Airports limp back to normalcy

At Delhi's IGI Airport Terminal 3, passenger experience improved on Saturday, though some issues persist. On Friday, non-functional self-drop baggage and check-in machines caused long queues outside Gate No. 5. On Saturday, many passengers could print boarding passes, but international travellers still faced issues, with some receiving manual passes.

Digi Yatra machines at Gates 1-3 remained non-operational, requiring manual entries. Display boards showing wait times and flight schedules, which were down on Friday, were functional on Saturday. However, the overall system had not fully recovered, according to airport officials.

Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport fared better, with smoother operations despite long queues. Two flights to Varanasi and Kochi were cancelled on Saturday morning, and several international flights were rescheduled, an improvement from Friday when nine domestic IndiGo flights were cancelled. IndiGo warned of potential cancellations on Saturday but was optimistic that Friday's disruption woold not recur.

(With agency inputs)