Airport systems in India resumed operations normally from 3 am on Saturday, hours after major disruptions caused inconvenience to passengers. However, the overall system has not yet fully recovered, as confirmed by airport officials. The significant backlog of cancelled and delayed flights and yet-to-be-delivered baggage means full restoration of normalcy may take a couple of days. Additionally, the process of rebooking affected passengers or processing refunds will begin as the systems are back up.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation on Saturday issued a statement saying airline systems across airports have started “working normally” and all issues related to travel adjustments and refund processes were being taken care of. Union Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said airline systems across airports, have started working normally, and all issues are likely to be resolved by noon on Saturday. The Ministry is constantly monitoring the operations at airports and airlines to ensure travel readjustments and refunds are taken care of, he added. “Since 3 am (Saturday), Airline systems across airports have started working normally. Flight operations are going smoothly now,” Naidu said.
At Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport’s Terminal 3, passengers experienced some improvement today, but a few problems persist as the Digi Yatra system, remained non-operational.
Long queues were observed at the departure terminals as passengers struggled to check in manually. Airport authorities have deployed additional staff to assist travellers and manage the congestion. Between 6-7 am today, the system continued to experience glitches while issuing boarding passes. However, the scenario improved later in the day.
In contrast to the chaos, most flights managed to stay on schedule, with the waiting period at Terminal 3 departures averaging around 3 to 5 minutes. The situation marked a significant improvement from Friday when the global outage led to widespread delays.
Meanwhile, Air India said none of its flights were cancelled on Saturday on the account of the worldwide outage of travel systems. According to officials, Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport fared better than its counterparts in Delhi and Bengaluru. Although long queues were reported, operations are running more smoothly today. At Mumbai airport two flights, one to Varanasi and one to Kochi, were cancelled this morning, and several international flights were rescheduled.
At Chennai airport, nearly six to eight flights in the domestic sector were cancelled today. However, on the international sector, there were no cancellations on Saturday and certain flights plying to Doha, Kuwait were delayed for a few hours.”About six flights in the domestic sector, including those airlines operating in Coimbatore, Kolkata, Kochi, Pune were cancelled by some airlines on Saturday. On the international route there were no cancellations and some airlines reported a delay in the departure and arrival,” an official said. In a notification, Chennai Airport appealed to the passengers to contact their respective airlines for rebooking and refund information.
IndiGo had to cancel 192 flights on Friday due to the outage. India’s largest carrier said on its website that it has cancelled 93 services scheduled for Saturday. Indigo has urged the passengers to check their flight status before heading to the airports. The domestic airline said that while their systems are “back online”, they are “diligently working” to resume normal operations which could extend into the weekend.
“In light of the recent global travel system outage, our team is continually putting in their best efforts and all our services are gradually being restored, including baggage handling. Our dedicated team is working round the clock to ensure your bags are delivered to you as swiftly as possible. We deeply regret the difficulties you have experienced and thank you for your continued support and trust,” Indigo said on X.
The reservation and check-in systems of most of the airlines, including IndiGo, SpiceJet, Akasa and Air India Express, are now operational, according to a source. “I am going to Ahmedabad. Online printing (Digi Yatra) is convenient, which wasn’t happening yesterday. Everything’s fine today. Flights are on time. What happened yesterday was a network issue. No one can do anything about that,” said a passenger at Delhi Airport
Airports across the country witnessed chaotic scenes after the online passenger booking, reservation and boarding systems turned to manual mode due to the outage, resulting in higher passenger handling processing time and consequently hundreds of flights were delayed and many cancelled. There is a backlog because of disruptions on Friday, and it is getting cleared gradually, according to the statement.
