Air India flights across the world affected

UPDATE

As of 3.05 pm, Saturday, April 27:

The national flag-carrier Air India has managed to restore its system following a check-in software glitch that caused massive delays across its domestic and international operations.

The carrier tweeted that the "temporary glitch" was restored at 8:45 am, but expected that passengers were to face "consequential delays".

"Between 3:30 to 4:30 am today (Saturday), passenger services system of Air India that is run by SITA was taken for maintenance and after that it remained down till 8:45 am, it has just come back. System restored. During the day we will see consequential delays," Air India chairman Ashwani Lohani was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Air India's flight operations were affected across India and abroad since early morning on Saturday due to knock-effect of the server shutdown. Air India earlier said the server "breakdown" affected its flights all over the world.

Air India chairman Ashwani Lohani, in an interview with the local channel NDTV, attributed the problem to shutdown of SITA software. SITA (Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques) is a multinational IT company providing telecommunication services to the air transport industry.

Thousands stranded

Thousands of Air India passengers were stranded at airports across the world Saturday, after a software "glitch" left those travelling with the state-run airline unable to check in, officials said.

More than 155 domestic and international flights were delayed for several hours because of a problem with the company's check-in software that brought operations to a halt — causing further flight delays across the globe.

Check-in software

"Our check-in software experienced a glitch following a routine software upgrade. It was resolved after six hours," Air India spokesman Praveen Bhatnagar told AFP.

Bhatnagar said most of the delays were on its domestic circuit and they were "doing everything possible to clear the backlog".

There were no flight cancellations and the airline expects operations to be back to normal by early evening, the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, CMD Air India Ashwani Lohani said that the glitch has been rectified.

The airline issued a statement on Twitter, saying: "Our server system SITA, which faced a temporary glitch, this morning was restored at 08.45hrs. Air India senior executives, including CMD, Directors, Station Heads rushed to airports to take control of situation and facilitate pax."

Earlier, one user, R Vasundara, posted a picture of a crowded Mumbai airport, labelling the whole incident a nightmare.

Another user with the handle Priyam expressed anger at the failure with operations, saying What to expect if that’s the condition of a national carrier.

Priyanka Gulati posted a video of a crowded airport, calling the process a waste of time.

After hours at the the Chandigarh airport and under threat of missing a connecting flight, Twitter user Mukhtiar Singh uses social media to ask authorities for answers.

He writes: "Hi authorities what’s happening. I am on the Chandigarh airport with family from 5:30 am waiting for flight to delhi and then From delhi to london. It’s a real shame authorities are not updating us what’s happening."

An Air India spokesperson issued a statement, explaining: "[The] SITA [IT] server is down. Due to which flight operation is affected. Our technical teams are on work and soon system may be recovered. Inconvenience is deeply regretted."

In choppy waters

India's aviation industry is in choppy waters after one of the country's largest private carriers, Jet Airways, last week halted its operations indefinitely following refusal by lenders to pay it cash to run day-to-day operations.

The state-owned loss making Air India operates more than 450 fights a day across the globe, with a majority of them flying domestically.

Saturday's software malfunction is a repeat of a similar outage in June last year that caused flight delays globally.