CHENNAI: Air passengers at the Chennai International Airport were caught off-guard on Friday as flight schedules were hit by a major disruption in Microsoft Corporation’s cloud services. The technical glitch resulted in crowding at the airport as airline officials began issuing handwritten boarding passes to passengers. Apart from cancellations, numerous flights were delayed by a minimum of 30 to 45 minutes.
According to airport sources, as of 8 pm on Friday, out of the total 192 domestic flights, 81 have been delayed and nine flights were cancelled. Out of the 36 international flights, nine have been delayed with no cancellations.
A Chennai airport official said that services of several airlines, including IndiGo, Akasa, SpiceJet, Air Asia and Air India Express, were hit. Several airlines also reported that their check-in and ticket management services were temporarily unavailable.
The airlines initiated manual check-ins to minimise disruption to passengers and flight schedules, said a Chennai airport spokesperson.
Meanwhile, in an official statement, IndiGo said, “Our team is working relentlessly to resolve the issue and restore normal services as quickly as possible.” An Air India Express spokesperson said that none of their flights were cancelled. “We are doing manual check-ins,” he added.
Notably, all those airlines using the Navitaire Departure Control System for passenger reservations were affected. According to the official website, Navitaire, an Amadeus company, migrated its 60+ airline customers to Microsoft Azure (the corporation’s cloud platform) last year.