At least 25 Air India flights were delayed globally due to a software glitch that hampered the airline’s check-in system on Saturday afternoon.
The software helps to inter-link passenger bookings with airport check-in. It has been provided by Air India’s technology provider SITA, which counts many other airlines that operate to as its clients such as Oman Air, Air Arabia and Uzbekistan.
“The link was down globally due to a technical issue. As a result, nearly 25 flights were affected across our network by up to an hour. As the problem occurred during afternoon hours, the impact on our operations was minimal as we carried out check-in manually,” said an airline spokesperson.
The systems were down for three to four hours resulting in major flight delays.
About 35% of Air India flights in and out of Delhi were affected. While Mumbai airport saw 26% delays, only 9% of the flights were affected at Bangalore airport. Delhi flights to Mumbai and Frankfurt, and Mumbai flights to Goa and Delhi were severely impacted, according to ixigo CEO and co-founder Aloke Bajpai.
SITA said that it has launched an investigation into the incident, but the services have been restored.
“We experienced a complex network connectivity issue at one of our data centres today, June 23rd, impacting primary and secondary routes, which resulted in some services to our customers being disrupted,” said a SITA spokesperson.