Passengers at the Delhi Airport continued grapple on July 20, with significant disruptions as the effects of a global Microsoft outage continue to ripple through aviation operations at the airport.
Despite Microsoft’s announcement that services have been restored, chaos reigns at the airport, with long queues at check-in counters, slow check-ins and the DigiYatra system continues to be offline.
The technical difficulties began on July 19, when a massive outage affected various sectors worldwide, particularly aviation. Sources from the Delhi Airport told business today, that IndiGo continued to have long queues at its counters on July 20. The airlines' staff said that this is owing to the disruptions in their systems after the Microsoft Outage, which still seems to not have been restored for the airlines.
A source from the Mumbai airport said that on July 19, after Microsoft announced the restoration in operations, IndiGo continued to carry out operations manually. After the airlines had issued manual boarding passes, the boarding process was also done manually, leading to further delays.
On July 19, Indian airlines IndiGo cancelled around 200 flights all across India, reporting the global system as the major reason behind this.
As per the information released by IndiGo on its website, around 192 flights, majorly from Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai, have been cancelled.
Major Indian airlines, including SpiceJet, Air India, and Vistara, experienced significant disruptions due to an issue with Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing platform that powers many of their critical systems. Passengers are facing increased wait times, slower check-ins, and longer queues at airports and contact centres.
Meanwhile, SpiceJet announced on July 19 that it has successfully resolved its technical issues and resumed normal operations.
While SpiceJet has managed to operate all scheduled flights without cancellations, other airlines are struggling to maintain their schedules amid the ongoing disruptions.
Ajay Singh, Chairman and Managing Director of SpiceJet, praised his team’s efforts, stating, “Our team worked tirelessly to ensure minimal disruption to our passengers' travel plans, and we are proud to have successfully operated all our scheduled flights today.”
(With inputs from Anwesha Madhukalya)