LIVE | Microsoft global outage: Many systems partially up, says IT Minister Vaishnaw
IndiGo has cancelled around 200 flights, however, the number of delayed flights can't be quantified, source said
Airport and airline operations across the country were almost crippled on Friday (July 19) due to a Microsoft outage globally, leading to a complete chaos with IndiGo alone cancelling around 200 flights.
In addition to this, hundreds of flights were delayed by a considerable time across airlines' networks due to the outage, which started from 1040 am, according to sources.
As services like bookings, check-in and boarding moved to manual mode, taking longer than expected time and leading 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 and venting out ire on airline staff.
The web check-in feature, which remained temporarily unavailable for passengers across airports, led to further chaos.
"They are doing it manually so obviously it will take time. They are taking about 30-40 minutes to process a passenger's ticket. How will they do it for all, They don't have a reply," said a passenger.
200 flights cancelled
IndiGo has cancelled around 200 flights, however, the number of delayed flights can't be quantified, said a source.
"The Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage has taken down most airports in India. I got my first hand-written boarding pass today," said IndiGo passenger Akshay Kothari in a post on X displaying his manual boarding pass.
According to preliminary data put out by aviation analytics firm Cirium on the global IT disruption in the afternoon, 56 flights were cancelled out of 3,652 flights scheduled from Indian destinations. This does not include inbound flights to India.
Union Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu assured the passengers that the ministry and Airports Authority of India (AAI) are actively managing the situation using manual methods to ensure minimal disruption.
"We have instructed all airlines and airport authorities to keep passengers informed about their flight status and provide necessary assistance," Naidu said.
What IT minister Vaishnaw said
Union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the ministry is in touch with Microsoft regarding the global outage.
"MEITY is in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage. The reason for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue.
"CERT is issuing a technical advisory. NIC network is not affected," Vaishnaw posted on his X handle.
Later, in the evening he said, "MEITY is continually in touch with Microsoft, which in turn is actively working with impacted entities. In addition, CERT-In is coordinating with CISOs of critical infrastructure entities. All impacted entities are working to bring up their systems. In many cases, systems are partially up."
(With agency inputs)
Live Updates
- 19 July 2024 12:16 PM GMT
9 flights cancelled at Chhattisgarh's Raipur airport
A widespread global computer outage on Friday led to several Indian airlines facing technical and operational disruptions, which also impacted Swami Vivekananda Airport in Chhattisgarh's Raipur, where nine flights belonging to IndiGo Airlines were cancelled, officials said.
These comprise five departures and four arrivals, they said, adding a few flights were also delayed. Officials, however, did not give details of these delayed flights.
"Five flights from Raipur to Bengaluru (at 19:55 hrs), Kolkata (20:45 hrs), Hyderabad (20:55 hrs), Mumbai (21:05 hrs) and Delhi (21:20 hrs) and four arrival flights, all belonging to IndiGo, have been cancelled following the IT outage," an airport official here told PTI.
Several passengers said the airport authority and airlines were not giving them proper updates.
- 19 July 2024 10:53 AM GMT
Flight operations affected at Bengaluru airport
"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. The Common Use Terminal Equipment (CUTE) and Common Use Self Service (CUSS) systems are also experiencing disruptions.
"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," Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL) spokesperson said.
- 19 July 2024 10:31 AM GMT
UK airports, trains, London Stock Exchange impacted
London's biggest airport, Heathrow, said in a statement that its "flights are operational though we are experiencing delays".
- 19 July 2024 10:25 AM GMT
Banks, payments systems unaffected by Microsoft outage
Indian banks and payments systems were unaffected by the Microsoft outage, which has impacted financial services players worldwide.
"We are all fine," SBI Chairman Dinesh Kumar Khara told PTI when asked about the impact of the outage on the operations at the country's largest lender which commands nearly 25 per cent market share.
National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) chief executive Dilip Asbe said the country's payments architecture, including the widely popular Unified Payments Interface, has been unaffected.
HDFC Bank, the biggest among the private sector lenders, also said that it has not faced any impact of the outage.
"Our systems are unaffected by the global outage. There is no impact on banking operations," said Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, the group head for information technology at HDFC Bank.
Officials at ICICI Bank and Axis Bank also said that their systems were working fine and showing no impact of the outage.
- 19 July 2024 10:06 AM GMT
'Not a cyberattack or security incident'
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike's CEO George Kurtz's message
- 19 July 2024 9:51 AM GMT
Microsoft's reaction: "We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming"
Microsoft on Friday said that it is aware of the issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform.
A Microsoft spokesperson said: "We're aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming."
