Airline operations at various airports affected by the global IT outage on Friday returned to normal on Saturday with all services from ticket booking to booking and issuance of boarding passes fully restored to online mode, sources said.
Earlier in the day, Civil Aviation Minister K Ram Mohan Naidu said that the airline system has started functioning normally and all issues may be resolved by noon on Saturday.
“All operations are back to normal. All our services, including reservations and reservations, have been available online since late Friday night.
“The system has been restored and our service has not been interrupted. It is returning to normal,” an executive at a budget airline said.
Still, as many as six to eight domestic flights were canceled at the Chennai airport on Saturday, airport authorities said.
“Some airlines canceled around six domestic flights on Saturday, including those operating from Coimbatore, Kolkata, Kochi and Pune. On international routes, there were no cancellations and some airlines reported delays in departures and arrivals delayed.
A product update provided by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike caused problems with Microsoft Windows worldwide on Friday, causing one of the worst IT outages ever, affecting the operations of financial industry companies and airlines, while hospital operations were disrupted. Postponed, some TV channels were also affected.
Due to the power outage, the online passenger booking, seat reservation and boarding systems were converted to manual mode, resulting in extended passenger processing times, hundreds of flight delays and cancellations, and chaos at airports across the country.
“Since 3 a.m. (Saturday), the aviation systems at various airports have begun normal operations. Naidu said in a statement that flight operations are currently progressing smoothly.
The minister said a backlog had developed due to Friday's flight disruptions and was being gradually cleared, adding that the ministry was constantly monitoring airport and airline operations to ensure travel adjustments and refunds were properly processed.
Air India said its own resilient IT infrastructure was not affected on Friday and continued to operate normally.
“We confirm that all Air India flights on July 19 have not been canceled due to the global travel system disruption, although there have been some delays due to the impact of airport service disruptions.
Sources said earlier in the day that the booking and check-in systems of most airlines including IndiGo, SpiceJet, Akasa and Air India Express are now operational.
“I'm going to Ahmedabad. Online printing (Digi Yatra) is very convenient, which didn't happen yesterday. Everything is fine today. The flight was on time. What happened yesterday was a network problem. No one is correct Nothing can be done,” said a passenger at Delhi airport.
“The global power outage that caused operational difficulties is close to being 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 airline IndiGo said .
IndiGo is the domestic airline with the largest market share, operating more than 2,000 flights every day. Due to the Microsoft outage, it had to cancel about 200 flights.
Two other airlines, SpiceJet and Akasa Air, said late Friday that all their systems at the airport, including ticket bookings, were up and running.
SpiceJet said that “all its systems at airports, ticket bookings and call centers are up and running smoothly after successfully resolving a Microsoft outage that affected the aviation industry throughout the day.”
The airline said: “While the outage of global reservation, check-in and check-in systems has created unprecedented operational challenges for our ground handling teams, Alcazar Air confirms that all scheduled flights on Friday will have minimal operational disruption of zero. Cancel.
(This article has not been edited by News18 staff and is published by PTI)
