Airline systems across airports working normally: Minister

NEW DELHI: The Union Ministry of Civil Aviation on Saturday confirmed that flight operations are going smoothly a day after a Microsoft Azure technical issue resulted in a daylong system outage, hitting operations across the global aviation industry.

“Since 3 am, airline systems across airports have started working normally. Flight operations are going smoothly now. There is a backlog because of disruptions yesterday, and it is getting cleared gradually. By noon today, we expect all issues to be resolved,” said the Ministry of Civil Aviation in an official statement.

The ministry added that the refunds are also being issued. “We are constantly monitoring operations at our airports and also with the airlines ensuring travel readjustments and refunds are taken care of. We thank you for your patience,” it added.

Late on Friday, SpiceJet said its services are back to normal after the technical outage was resolved, adding that no flights were cancelled due to the issue. "Our team worked to ensure minimal disruption to our passengers' travel plans," said the airline.

Following the outage, budget carrier Akasa Air said all its scheduled flights on Friday operated with minimum disruptions and no flights were cancelled.

"Our team's efforts and swift response across flight dispatch, airport services, care centre collaborating to activate our operations continuity plan that called for manual processes including manual check-in and boarding of thousands of passengers and yet maintain continuity of our services with nil cancellation of flights," the carrier said.

IndiGo had reportedly cancelled around 200 flights due to the outage.