HYDERABAD : At least 36 flights were cancelled by Friday evening at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA), Hyderabad, due to disruption caused by a global outage in Microsoft’s cloud services stemming from a software update glitch.
According to RGIA authorities, all affected flights belonged to IndiGo airlines. Among them, 19 were scheduled for departure.
The routes affected were Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam, Cochin, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram, Jaipur, Raipur, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, among others.
The airport authorities issued an advisory on the X stating: “Advisory: Due to the global IT outage, services of airlines have been impacted. We are closely working with all our stakeholders to minimise the inconvenience to our flyers. You may please get in touch with the airline concerned for updates on your flight information. We thank you for your support and understanding,” the advisory said.
IndiGo issued multiple travel advisories with links for checking flight and refund status during the day while noting that its systems across the network have been impacted due to an issue with Microsoft Azure. The disruption affected booking, check-in, and access to boarding passes. “War rooms” were set up at major airports, including Hyderabad, to manage operations.
“As many as 200 flights have been cancelled nationwide. Technical staff are working to resolve the issue as systems are still recovering,” sources connected with IndiGo informed TNIE.
Meanwhile, passengers were seen standing in the long lines at the RGIA and enquiring with the airlines’ staff regarding the delay as well as rescheduling of their flights from afternoon till late evening.
“I faced inconvenience at the check-in counter, where no information was provided. My flight was at 1:20pm and I was in the line from 12pm to 12:45pm. No information over delay of the flight or server issues faced, were informed to the passengers. Moreover, I don’t understand why they (IndiGo) have taken up only three counters to manage people. at such a big Airport. I have never seen this at any other airport,” Rishi Lalla, who was travelling to Mumbai, told TNIE.
IndiGo said that it has made alternative arrangements.
IT employees also experienced disruptions. “We have not been able to use any applications as they are connected to Microsoft. Many of my colleagues are not able to switch on the laptop either,” KV Santosh, an IT employee, told TNIE.
Meanwhile, the software glitch forced IndiGo to return to the previous practice of issuing a handwritten boarding pass, a picture of which was shared by a passenger travelling from Hyderabad to Kolkata on X. The photo went viral on social media. “The Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage has taken down most airports in India. I got my first handwritten boarding pass today,” wrote Akshay Kothari on X.