Thousands of bags displaced following glitch at Delhi airport

A major system failure in the baggage handling system of the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi on Thursday evening left several thousand bags misplaced after they were not loaded on to departing aircraft.

Passengers arriving at various airports across India took to social media and complained of not having received their baggage. Vistara, in a statement, said that Delhi airport had been facing challenges with the baggage handling system post check-in and that all airlines and hundreds of bags were impacted and were not being loaded onto flights.

“The airlines have taken this up with Delhi airport officials, and they are working on a solution. Please bear with us until we can get the stuck bags delivered to you, we are trying to get them delivered as soon as possible. We apologise for this situation, which is not completely not in airlines control,” Vistara said in a statement.

A spokesperson of GMR, which operates the Indira Gandhi International Airport told The Hindu that with the holiday weekend, Delhi Airport on Thursday experienced an increase level of dangerous goods, particularly power banks and lighters, in customer checked-in luggage. "The incident rate today was 30% higher than an average day. This impacted the baggage handling processing due to the manual reconciliation of the suspect baggage with the passenger and removal of the prohibited item."

The spokesperson further said that passengers were being reminded, not to pack these items in their checked-luggage to avoid inconvenience. "This has reduced the instances of passengers sending their baggage with prohibited items on the baggage handling system and hence the issue is now under control."