The ministry said it is actively monitoring airport and airline operations to ensure smooth travel readjustments and refunds.
After a global IT outage on Friday, airline systems at airports are back to normal operations. Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu assures that all issues will be resolved by noon on Saturday. The ministry said it is actively monitoring airport and airline operations to ensure smooth travel readjustments and refunds. Passengers can expect a seamless travel experience as the systems are back online. “Since 3 AM (Saturday), Airline systems across airports have started working normally. Flight operations are going smoothly now,” Naidu said in a statement.
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There is a backlog because of disruptions on Friday, and it is getting cleared gradually, according to the statement. “By noon today, we expect all issues to be resolved,” the minister said.
On Friday, a significant IT outage occurred worldwide due to a product update by CrowdStrike, impacting Microsoft’s Windows systems. Financial sector companies, airlines, hospitals, and television channels faced disruptions. Airports faced chaos as passenger systems shifted to manual mode, leading to delays and cancellations of hundreds of flights. Operations at hospitals were postponed, and some TV channels went off air. The outage resulted in higher passenger handling times and operational challenges across various sectors.
Flight check-in system now operational
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 at PTI.
“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.
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 Friday evening that all their systems at airports, including ticket bookings, were up and running.
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SpiceJet said that “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.
CrowdStrike’s update highlights the critical importance of IT infrastructure resilience in today’s interconnected world.
