Sunday was no better for stranded Air India passengers, as the five-hour shutdown of the airline’s check-in software, which occurred on Saturday, continued its ripple effect. At least 137 flights faced an average delay of three hours.
“The average duration of delay, on these 137 flights of Sunday, would be of 197 minutes,” said a company spokesperson. The delays could continue for another 2 to 3 days due to the ripple effect.
About 149 flights of the carrier were affected by the software shutdown on Saturday.
The passengers continued to vent their ire on social media as the airline could not issue them boarding passes. “We are sorry. This was the message passed to more than 500 Air India passengers on 28th…” tweeted Naveen Singh, who was travelling from Delhi to London via Rome. In his tweet on Sunday, Naveen claimed that he was later booked on flight AI 123 at 12.50 am, while some 52 passengers did not receive their boarding pass due to overbooking.
On Saturday, there was a sudden breakdown in Air India’s server between 3.30 am and 8.45 am, which crippled the airline’s PSS software. This software, which handles check-in, baggage and reservation, and failed to function on Saturday, is managed by SITA, an air transport IT and communications specialist firm based in Atlanta. No other Indian airline apart from Air India uses SITA’s PSS software.
Incidentally, SITA said the snag happened during maintenance of the system.
“The SITA system was restored at 8.45 am. Due to this, till 10 am, 85 of our flights have been delayed. Because of the delay, a ripple effect will take place throughout the day,” Air India chairman-cum-managing director Ashwani Lohani had said in a statement earlier.
SITA spokesman Julius Baumann affirmed, “SITA experienced a complex system issue during server maintenance early this morning, which resulted in operational disruption to AI flights. We have now fully restored services at all airports where Air India were affected”.
Baumann also informed that it is undertaking a complete investigation to understand the root cause and prevent a recurrence.
The airline operates 470 flights per day, while the Air India Group provides 674 flight services.
A similar incident took place on June 23 last year when a technical glitch in the airline’s check-in software delayed 25 of its flights across India.