Check-in queue at Pune Airport on Friday afternoon. (Picture Credit: Tarun Nagpal on Twitter) Passengers reaching Pune Airport to board their flights had a hard time on Friday afternoon as check-in counters of airlines were allegedly not functioning properly due to disruption in internet connectivity. The airlines had to resort to manually checking in passengers, which slowed down the process and led to spiralling queues at the counters.
Airports Authority of India (AAI) said in a statement that the data cables providing internet connectivity to the airport were broken due to road repair work underway outside the airport. The counters remained offline for several hours before connectivity returned at 5.20 pm.
“Due to the ongoing road resurfacing work outside the airport, a few data cables have been broken which has disrupted the check-in system servers. Repair work is underway. Due to this disruption, airlines are doing manual check-ins and this may cause delays in the check-in process. We are working on early rectification. Inconvenience is regretted,” officials said in a joint statement on Friday afternoon.
Due to increased passenger footfall, the airport is already witnessing heavy crowding at the two security check-in areas, with passengers complaining of long queues and inconvenience during the process.
Airport officials have said that a part of the international departure area will be carved out to set up a new security check-in area for domestic flyers.
The area will have two additional baggage scanning machines to relieve the ongoing crowding and inconvenience to passengers.
Passengers who were inconvenienced by Friday’s technical glitch took to social media to complain about the mess.
At present, 94 flights, including both departures and arrivals, are operating from Pune airport every day, three of which are international flights. Being a “civil enclave”, the airport is smaller than other airports in major cities. Recently, it has been expanded and plans are afoot to increase the capacity further.