VIJAYAWADA: A global Microsoft outage on Friday caused significant disruptions across various industries, including software, hospitality, aviation, and retail. The outage led to the cancellation of a total of four flights, including three from Visakhapatnam and one from Vijayawada. As a result of the technical issue, a total of 18 flight services, both arrivals and departures, at the Rajamahendravaram airport were delayed, but not cancelled.
“Three flights from Visakhapatnam — two to Hyderabad and one to Kolkata — were cancelled due to the Microsoft outage. The status of Saturday’s flight schedules can only be ascertained once the issue is resolved,” said Visakhapatnam International Airport Director Raja Reddy.
Further, Gannavaram Airport authorities informed that Indigo flight 6E7134 was cancelled due to technical issues. The flight, scheduled to arrive Vijayawada from Bengaluru at 8:30 pm on Friday and return at 8:45 pm, faced an unexpected cancellation of both its to-and-fro services.
In addition to the flight cancellation, technical difficulties also impacted the online services of Indigo and Air India Express. As a result, the airlines were unable to issue digital boarding passes, and so the staff had to manually fill the boarding passes.
Airport authorities said airline staff worked diligently to resolve the issues and ensure minimal disruption to passengers’ travel plans.
According to Madhurapudi Airport Officer Gneneswar, six flights to Hyderabad, two to Bengaluru, and one to Chennai are operated from Rajamahendravaram.
Unexpected day off for Techies
The services of these flights were delayed by 30 to 45 minutes. While an atmosphere of chaos ensued at airports, it was a rather calm day for software professionals in the Port City as the outage resulted in an unexpected day off.
“It’s been a nice day for the employees. They engaged in games and various activities. We also took this opportunity to conduct pending training. It has been a light day overall, but we will need to focus on recovering the production loss over the next two to three days, which will be hectic,” said RL Narayana, chairman of ITAAP (Information Technology Association of Andhra Pradesh) Investment Committee.
Elaborating on the issue, he said, “We became aware of the issue around 10:00-10:30 am on Friday. The impact has been very severe, resulting in almost an entire day of production loss. Network technicians are going system by system to reset and restore functionality. Around 5:00 pm, the issue was resolved.
However, the BPO industry has been strongly hit due to the need for certified technicians to reset systems, unlike in software companies where engineers can manage it themselves.”
