Passengers were left stranded and confusion prevailed at the Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport on Saturday as several Air India flights got delayed due to a technical problem.
According to reports, a glitch in the airline’s SITA server forced a complete disruption in the services of the national carrier on a busy weekend day. SITA is a global airlines IT services solution major, which provides its check-in, boarding and baggage tracking technology.
Around 23 flights were affected due to the technical glitch, said reports.
Airport authorities reportedly said that the server was down for a few hours. The problem has now been resolved and services are back on.
Yet the disruption in services caused discomfort to passengers. Some took to Twitter to air their grievance. It appeared that the problem with the server was nationwide and not restricted to Delhi alone.
Just reached Delhi Airport and found out that Air India servers are down for the last two hours. All domestic and international flights are grounded. The airport looks like a mela of stranded passengers with hardly any space to even walk.
— Akhilesh Mishra (@amishra77) June 23, 2018
People headed to New Delhi Air Port. Air India Flights are not taking off due to a reported Server And boarding Check-In Systems #hack #airindia #delhi several flights grounded
— Bharat Nagpal (@Djkrimp) June 23, 2018
Waiting for #AirIndia to depart for the last one hour inside thr plane. No information no updates, just pure harassment #epicfail @sureshpprabhu pic.twitter.com/ARQJrIV0bD
— Manan Jain (@m4ugr8) June 23, 2018
Capt. Panna Rajagopal AI863 “..delayed due to a nationwide systems failure across Air India network. We expect pushback in 15 mins. We will try and persuade ATC to give us the shortest route + approach. Apologies.” The BEST cockpit msg. I’ve heard in 23 years of frequent flying
— rathin roy (@EmergingRoy) June 23, 2018
@sureshpprabhu Sir please enquire about the situation of Air India flights at Delhi Airport urgently. It’s a complete chaos since last 4 hours. No flight has taken off and all passengers are extremely disturbed. The ground staff is totally ineffective in answering any query.
— Saurav (@SauravGupta81) June 23, 2018
@airindia AI491 boarding not yet started , showing gate closed pic.twitter.com/ZYzSnMcpw9
— VIVEK (@baidvivek) June 23, 2018
@airindiain its very unfortunate we are waiting for flight AI-408 at Patna airport and its delayed by approx 2 hrs without any information due to this rush all around and its mis management by both AirIndia and Airport authority any plan to improve service here?
@MoCA_GoI— SHAUKAT ALI (@shaukat2k4) June 23, 2018
The problem comes a day after Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu launched ‘Maharaja Direct’ – a makeover exercise that aims at making Air India’s business and first-class passengers travel in greater comfort on long-haul international flights.