BENGALURU: In line with a similar situation playing out at airports across the country, SpiceJet flights to and from Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) were delayed for hours on Wednesday morning. As a result, flyers across India suffered enormously and had to wait for hours, many of them inside their flights.
SpiceJet flights at KIA were delayed right from 5 am. They include the departures from Bengaluru to Delhi (SG136), Hyderabad (SG7614), Pune (SG516), Jabalpur (SG3023), Gwalior (SG3325) and two flights to Darbhanga (SG693, SG453). A flight bound to Chennai (SG3027) at 6.10 am was cancelled.
Regarding the arrival flights, those from Bagdogra (SG 328), Gwalior (SG 3326) and Darbanga (SG 494) suffered delays. The return leg (SG 3028) of the Chennai flight which did not take off from here stood automatically cancelled.
According to a statement from an official spokesperson of the airline released later, “Certain Spicejet systems faced an attempted ransomware attack last night that impacted and slowed down morning flight departures today. Our IT team has contained and rectified the situation and flights are operating normally now.”
Flyers across India took to social media to vent their anger over the issue. Avinash Singh a flyer tweeted, “I had a flight from Ahmedabad at 7.20 which had to reach Jaipur at 8.30 and had my exams from 11.30” Who will pay for my degree? @spicjet have mentally harassed and this is not the first time and you can’t evade in the name of technical issues @Jm_schindia.”
The flight (SG 2345) from Dharmashala took off nearly four and a half hrs after it was delayed.
Entrepreneur Mudit Shejwar, onboard the flight put out a video to show the stranded flight there. Lashing out at Spicejet’s official tweet put out at 8.30 pm that it had resumed normal operations, he said, “Operating normally? We are stuck here since 3 hrs and 45 mins? Neither cancelling nor operating, sitting in the flight, not even the airport. No breakfast, no response.” He sought to know what would happen to the losses flyers suffered due to the delay.
Many others took to Twitter to vent their anger.
Passengers suffer as Spicejet flights to and from Bengaluru airport delayed by hours