Bhubaneswar: A major IT outage caused by Microsoft led to significant disruptions at Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA) Friday, resulting in the cancellation of five flights and delays of up to three hours for many others. The outage affected global services, causing chaos for passengers.
The latest reports indicate that passengers were checked in manually due to the outage. This led to widespread frustration among travellers, many of whom took to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to express their grievances. Ankita Bhatkhande, a passenger affected by the delays, tweeted, “It is terrible. I am at Bhubaneswar Airport now and the flight to Mumbai is delayed by 2 hours as of now. There is barely any place to sit.”
Many passengers were only informed about flight cancellations upon arriving at the airport. Sudeshna Panda, who was scheduled to fly to Pune with Air India, reported being notified of the cancellation after reaching the airport. “The officials at the Air India kiosk informed that every passenger would get a refund for the cancellation,” he said.
Airlines issued statements acknowledging the impact of the outage on flight booking and check-in services and advised passengers that these services would remain disrupted until the issue was resolved.
Sudesh Mohapatra, another affected passenger, mentioned his flight to Pune was cancelled and only learned of this after arriving at the airport. He noted that authorities assured passengers they would receive refunds by the following day.
PNN