Airlines hit hard in India, other sectors unaffected

Bengaluru: India’s aviation sector was hit hard on Friday by a major Microsoft outage, with airports in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru among the worst hit.

India’s largest carrier Indigo canceled 270 flights, according to a statement on its website at 8:30 p.m., including 40 departures from Mumbai and 33 each from Delhi and Bengaluru.

Others, such as SpiceJet, Akasa and Air India, have issued urgent warnings to passengers as their online check-in and boarding systems have gone down. Faced with chaos in digital processes, airlines have been forced to resort to manual operations, causing widespread disruption and delays across their networks.

Most other sectors, including banks and markets, were unaffected. Only Maruti Suzuki said it was hit briefly.

Passengers huddled near the check-in gates and the arrivals and departures curb at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) on Friday, trying to make sense of the cancellations and delays. While some passengers said they were looking for overnight flights, many were considering staying overnight in the city.

That day, airline employees were manually checking in — for the first time for many of them — on boarding passes. Passengers stuck in the waiting room said there was no official information about alternative flights. “I had an IndiGo flight in the evening, which was cancelled. I’m not sure whether I should stay and see if the situation improves or start tomorrow,” Abhishek, a passenger who was supposed to fly to Kolkata, told DH.

Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL), the operator of KIA, said in its initial response that the outage forced four carriers operating from the two terminals — IndiGo, Air India Express, SpiceJet and Akasa — to initiate manual check-in.

“The airline is closely monitoring the situation and any further decisions regarding flight operations will be based on updates from the cloud service provider. A dedicated team has been deployed to address these technical issues and minimize disruption,” Indigo said in a statement.

The company said it has set up “operations rooms” at four airports to manage operations.

Air India asked passengers to check their flight status before heading to the airport, while SpiceJet said it had not recorded a single flight cancellation despite the glitches.

Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu said the civil aviation ministry in collaboration with AAI “has put in place manual backup systems to maintain operational continuity”. Naidu said the outage led to “flight cancellations and long queues of people outside airports and check-in counters across the country”.

However, other sectors were not affected as much. India’s financial and payment systems remained largely unaffected, although around 10 banks and NBFCs faced minor disruptions that were resolved or are being fixed, according to PTI.

The Reserve Bank of India said it has assessed the impact of the outage on its regulated entities. “Most banks’ critical systems are not in the cloud; furthermore, only a few banks are using CrowdStrike. Our assessment shows that only 10 banks and NBFCs had minor disruptions that have been resolved or are being resolved,” the RBI said in a statement.

Car major Maruti Suzuki said it was partially affected, with production and shipping operations briefly halted. However, the company said it was able to resume operations.