Airport aviation systems operational after IT failure, minister says
Aviation systems at airports, which were hit by a global IT outage on Friday, have resumed normal functioning and all issues are likely to be resolved by noon on Saturday, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said. The ministry is continuously monitoring operations at airports and airlines to ensure that travel adjustments and refunds are processed, he added.
“Since 3 am (Saturday), airline systems at all airports are functioning normally. Flight operations are now running smoothly,” Naidu said in a statement.
On Friday, an update to a product from global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused one of the largest IT outages in history, causing global disruptions to Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The disruptions affected financial institutions and airlines, while hospital operations were suspended and some television channels went off the air.
Airports across the country were thrown into chaos after online systems for booking, reserving and boarding passengers were switched to manual mode due to the outage, causing longer processing times and hundreds of flights being delayed and many cancelled.
According to the statement, there is a backlog due to the disruptions on Friday, but this is gradually being resolved.
“We expect all issues to be resolved by 12 noon today,” the minister said.
According to a source, reservation and check-in systems of most airlines, including IndiGo, SpiceJet, Akasa and Air India Express, are now operational.
“I am going to Ahmedabad. Online printing (DigiYatra) is convenient, which was not happening yesterday. Today everything is fine. Flights are on time. What happened yesterday was a network issue. No one can do anything about it,” said a passenger at Delhi Airport.
“The global disruption that led to operational issues is almost resolved and our teams have made significant progress in restoring normal operations. However, customers may still experience delays and disruptions to schedules over the weekend,” budget carrier IndiGo said.
IndiGo, the largest airline by domestic market share with over 2,000 daily flights, had to cancel about 200 flights due to the Microsoft outage.
The other two airlines, SpiceJet and Akasa Air, said late on Friday that all their systems at airports, including ticket bookings, are operational again.
SpiceJet said “all systems at airports, ticket bookings and call centres are running smoothly again following successful resolution of the Microsoft outage that impacted the aviation sector throughout the day”.
“While the global system outage of reservations, check-in and boarding systems presented an unprecedented operational challenge for our ground services team, Akasa Air confirms that all scheduled flights on Friday operated with minimal disruption and zero cancellations,” the airline said.
