NEW DELHI: A chaos-like situation erupted at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on Friday, with airlines being hit majorly due to an outage. Critical systems used for flight operations, passenger check-in, and baggage handling remained hit.
Passengers formed a long queue as web check-ins remained suspended. Authorities issued hand-written boarding passes as work switched to manual mode. Security check and baggage counters had long queues.
“Due to the global IT issue, some of the services at the Delhi Airport were temporarily impacted. We are closely working with all our stakeholders to minimise the inconvenience to our flyers,” the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) said in a statement.
Among the airlines, IndiGo’s flight schedule was hit hardest, with around 200 planes being cancelled and hundreds being delayed across the country. “Flights are cancelled due to the cascading effect of the worldwide travel system outage, beyond our control. You may experience slower check-ins and longer queues. We are all hands on deck and are working relentlessly to restore stability and normalcy,” IndiGo said in an advisory. The airlines set up war rooms at major airports.
The global downtime of Microsoft servers impacted top private hospitals such as Sir Ganga Ram, Max Healthcare, Fortis and Apollo, forcing them to switch to manual processes, delaying services to patients. However, public healthcare institutes in the capital remained unaffected as they used government servers, according to officials.
