BENGALURU: Friday turned out to be a miserable day for flyers in Bengaluru as a total of 28 departing flights from the Kempegowda International Airport and 25 incoming flights were cancelled abruptly due to a global Microsoft system outage. At least 77 flights suffered considerable delays. Most of the cancelled flights were operated by Indigo.
With airlines failing to alert flyers about the cancellation, hundreds suffered as they reached the airport by taxi and then had to return home, thus spending both ways.
With the check-in of flyers done manually and a paper boarding pass issued inside the terminal, queues moved very slowly in both Terminal 1 & 2 of the airport. "Flights had to be cancelled due to the huge pile-up of flyers queuing up for checks," said an airport source. Both incoming and outgoing flights were delayed for an average of 45-50 minutes.
Among those whose flight was cancelled was Vibhor V, a consultant in Analytics. With the web check-in completed and boarding pass too on hand, he travelled from Bannerghatta to board his Mumbai flight (6E 5376, which had a departure time of 7.15 pm from T1.
He told The New Indian Express, "I reached by 4.15 pm and got a shock when the CISF staff did not permit me to enter the terminal. They tried to scan my boarding pass and it could not be done. They said my flight is cancelled as per their records. They asked me to visit the Indigo counter for refund or rescheduling of the flight."
When he reached that counter, he saw hundreds waiting for the refund. "Indigo said they could not give me the refund immediately as the systems were not working. Nor could they reschedule to the following day as they did not know the flying status of the next day flights," Vibhor added.
He paid Rs 1,000 as taxi fare to reach the airport and is paying a similar sum to get back home.
Aditya Tulsyan posted on X that his parents waiting at the airport were panicking after their flight got cancelled and no one was helping them.
Those who tried booking tickets for future travel too suffered with the fare accepted but ticket not issued.
Karthik Ramanath, was booking a round trip ticket from Bengaluru to Mumbai around noon. "I booked my onward ticket from Bengaluru to Mumbai on July 31. It got booked. When I tried booking the return ticket, it said server is down and I could not do so. However, the fare has been deducted. I got a mail later saying my fare will be reimbursed within five days," he said.
Cancelled flights
An Airport Authority of India source said, "Most of the cancelled flights from Bengaluru were operated by Indigo. Their flights to Delhi (6E 6539, 6E 5267), Jaipur (6E 838), Ahmedabad, Trivandrum (6E 6628),Mumbai (6E 5376) Bhopal (6E 6465), Madurai (6E 7586), Hyderabad (6E 638, 6E 855),Chennai (6E 6017) and Vijayawada (6E 7134) were among those cancelled. No international or cargo flight was cancelled." An Air India flight (AI 594)to Coimbatore and a Spicjet flight (SG 531) to Patna from KIA were also cancelled.
BIAL version
A spokesperson of KIA operator, Bangalore International Airport Limited, said, "Global outage with the Navitaire Departure Control System (DCS) has been affecting operations of some airlines across their network, including Bengaluru Airport since 10:40 am.on July 19. Indigo, Akasa, and SpiceJet in T1 and Air India Express in T2 are among the impacted airlines. The Common Use Terminal Equipment (CUTE) and Common Use Self Service (CUSS) systems are also experiencing disruptions." The airlines were carrying out manual check-ins, the spokespeson added.