Thousands of passengers across the world were stranded after the Indian flag-bearer’s server crashed at around 5am local time, halting its global operations.
Though the services were restored after around five hours of delay, dozens of flights were affected with the breakdown not allowing passengers to check in.
According to Air India’s regional manager, Mohit Sain, most of the flights from the region had departed before the disruption happened.
Here in the UAE we have had a limited impact of the disruption because the server crashed after most of our flights had departed from Dubai and Sharjah, said Sain.
However, he added the global crash led to delays of six flights and passengers were alerted in time, and notified about the change in timings.
Among the affected flights were AI934 Dubai to Kochi, which was rescheduled to 5.35pm, experiencing a three-hour delay.
Another flight facing significant delay was AI938 Dubai to Calicut, which was rescheduled to 8.45pm.
The airline’s budget carrier Air India Express also faced disruptions, with two flights from Sharjah rescheduled, including IX536 to Thiruvananthapuram which was scheduled for a 1pm departure, running late by more than an hour and IX354 was rescheduled for a 4pm departure, delayed by one hour 20 minutes.
According to a statement by Air India, a glitch in its passenger services system developed by aviation IT solutions firm SITA hampered the airline’s check-in and other passenger services.
At least 35 flights were affected when the system was down between 5am and 10am, however, the cascading effect of the disruption delayed more than 150 flights both domestically and internationally.
Air India has had previous issues of system failures with the most recent being in June last year when its passenger check in software crashed due to unexpected network connectivity issues.
As of 3.05 pm, Saturday, April 27:
The national flag-carrier Air India had managed to restore its system following a check-in software glitch that caused massive delays across its domestic and international operations.
The carrier tweeted that the temporary glitch was restored at 8:45 am, but expected that passengers were to face consequential delays.
Between 3:30 to 4:30 am Saturday, passenger services system of Air India that is run by SITA was taken for maintenance and after that it remained down till 8:45 am, it has just come back.
System restored. During the day we will see consequential delays, Air India chairman Ashwani Lohani said.
Air India's flight operations were affected across India and abroad since early morning on Saturday due to knock-effect of the server shutdown. Air India earlier said the server breakdown affected its flights all over the world.
Air India chairman Ashwani Lohani, in an interview with the local channel NDTV, attributed the problem to shutdown of SITA software. SITA (Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques) is a multinational IT company providing telecommunication services to the air transport industry.
Thousands of Air India passengers were stranded at airports across the world Saturday, after a software glitch left those travelling with the state-run airline unable to check in, officials said.
More than 155 domestic and international flights were delayed for several hours because of a problem with the company's check-in software that brought operations to a halt causing further flight delays across the globe.
Our check-in software experienced a glitch following a routine software upgrade. It was resolved after six hours, Air India spokesman Praveen Bhatnagar said.
Bhatnagar said most of the delays were on its domestic circuit and they were doing everything possible to clear the backlog.
There were no flight cancellations and the airline expects operations to be back to normal by early evening, the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, CMD Air India Ashwani Lohani said that the glitch has been rectified.
The airline issued a statement on Twitter, saying: Our server system SITA, which faced a temporary glitch, this morning was restored at 08.45hrs. Air India senior executives, including CMD, Directors, Station Heads rushed to airports to take control of situation and facilitate pax.
Earlier, one user, R Vasundara, posted a picture of a crowded Mumbai airport, labelling the whole incident a nightmare.
Another user with the handle Priyam expressed anger at the failure with operations, saying What to expect if that’s the condition of a national carrier.
Priyanka Gulati posted a video of a crowded airport, calling the process a waste of time.
After hours at the the Chandigarh airport and under threat of missing a connecting flight, Twitter user Mukhtiar Singh uses social media to ask authorities for answers.
He wrote: Hi authorities what’s happening. I am on the Chandigarh airport with family from 5:30 am waiting for flight to delhi and then From delhi to london. It’s a real shame authorities are not updating us what’s happening.
An Air India spokesperson issued a statement, explaining: The SITA [IT] server is down. Due to which flight operation is affected. Our technical teams are on work and soon system may be recovered. Inconvenience is deeply regretted.
India's aviation industry is in choppy waters after one of the country's largest private carriers, Jet Airways, last week halted its operations indefinitely following refusal by lenders to pay it cash to run day-to-day operations.
The state-owned loss making Air India operates more than 450 fights a day across the globe, with a majority of them flying domestically.
Saturday's software malfunction is a repeat of a similar outage in June last year that caused flight delays globally.
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