Chaos at airports as tech outage hits airline check-in; banks largely unaffected

Airports across the country witnessed chaotic scenes on Friday after dozens of flights were either delayed or cancelled after a widespread global computer outage that also hit operations like cash withdrawal at some banks, and impacted functioning of some brokerages.

In one of the biggest-ever IT outages, an update of a product offered by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered problems with Microsoft's Windows across the planet, hitting operations at financial sector companies and airlines while hospital operations got postponed and some television channels went off air.

In India, it led to crashing of airline check-in systems, causing delays and cancellation of dozens of flights.

IndiGo alone cancelled around 200 flights.

Hundreds of other flights got delayed as bookings, check-in and boarding moved to manual mode.

The Indian financial and payments systems remained largely unaffected, though about 10 banks and NBFCs faced minor disruptions, which have either been resolved or are being fixed, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) -- the sector regulator -- said.

Airports from Chennai to Delhi witnessed chaotic scenes as harried passengers argued with airline staff over either not informing about delays and cancellations or not giving them alternate flights.

Web check-in services were not available, leading to long queues at check-in counters and over-crowded lounges at several airports.

IndiGo, Akasa Air, Vistara, Air India, SpiceJet and Air India Express posted messages on X saying they were facing issues.

Passengers were issued hand-written boarding passes and the entire process of doing manual ticketing as well as passenger and luggage check-in took 30-40 minutes per person, some travellers said.

According to preliminary data put out by aviation analytics firm Cirium on the global IT disruption in the afternoon, 56 out of 3,652 flights scheduled from Indian destinations were cancelled.

Airlines slowly began resuming some operations but making up for the delayed or cancelled flights may take some time.

Union Civil Aviation Minister Rammohan Naidu assured passengers that his ministry and Airports Authority of India (AAI) are actively managing the situation using manual methods to ensure minimal disruption.

"The reasons for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue," Minister for Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

While some brokerage firms, including Nuvama Wealth Management, Edelweiss Mutual Fund, Motilal Oswal, IIFL Securities, 5Paisa Capital, and Angel Broking, faced technical issues, stock exchanges NSE and BSE said their operations were running normally.

Auto major Maruti Suzuki India said it had briefly halted production and dispatch operations due to the outage.

Tata Motors passenger EV arm in a post on X (formerly Twitter) said telephone lines at its contact centre are not functioning and it is working hard to resolve the issue.

IT major Wipro said while its own operations remained unaffected, it was assisting clients in the US and Europe who faced issues.

"Earlier today, a Crowdstrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of IT systems globally.

“We are actively supporting customers to assist in their recovery," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

Vaishnaw said the IT ministry is continually in touch with Microsoft, which in turn is actively working with impacted entities.

"In addition, CERT-In is coordinating with CISOs of critical infrastructure entities.

“All impacted entities are working to bring up their systems. In many cases, systems are partially up," the minister said in a post on X.

Meanwhile, CERT-In has issued an advisory on the Microsoft outage caused by the Crowdstrike update, and rated its severity as "critical".

"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts...This is not a security incident or cyberattack.

“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed," CrowdStrike president and CEO George Kurtz posted on X.

As services like bookings, check-ins and boarding moved to manual mode, taking longer than expected time and leading to long queues at airports, passengers, including those who were travelling due to some emergency reasons, were seen complaining about the lack of information about their flights and venting out ire on airline staff.

"We have instructed all airlines and airport authorities to keep passengers informed about their flight status and provide necessary assistance," Civil Aviation Minister Naidu said.

The impact was more on passengers flying out of high-density airports like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai.

"A global outage with the Navitaire Departure Control System (DCS) has been affecting operations of some airlines across their network, including BLR Airport since 10:40 IST on July 19, 2024.

“Indigo, Akasa, and SpiceJet in T1 and Air India Express in T2 are among the impacted airlines," a Bengaluru airport spokesperson said.

The Common Use Terminal Equipment and Common Use Self Service systems are also experiencing disruptions, the airport operator said, adding that in response to this situation, IndiGo, Air India Express, SpiceJet, and Akasa have taken proactive measures by initiating manual check-ins to ensure minimal disruption to passengers and flight schedules.

"Due to a major global system outage, all gate screens at DEL (Delhi airport) are blank.

“Flights are being held at the gate. Some gates boarding pax (passengers) and holding on board, some flights holding pax at gate itself, which is better. Seems to be impacting many airports and airlines," Sanjiv Kapoor, executive vice-president (strategies) of Saudia Airlines and former CEO of Jet Airways 2.0, said in a post on X.

Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport saw as many as 23 flights -- 12 departures and 11 arrivals -- including IndiGo's flights to Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, Ahmedabad, and Bengaluru being cancelled.