New Delhi: Hundreds of Air India passengers were left stranded at several airports across the world as its check-in software stopped functioning for around six hours, the airline said Saturday. However, it also said that system had been restored.
According to airline sources, the software, which is of Atlanta-based SITA company, was not functioning approximately from 3.00am to 9.00am Saturday. Consequently, boarding passes could not be issued at major airports across the world and various flights were delayed.
“The system has been restored. It has begun functioning. We regret the inconvenience that passengers had to face,” said the national carrier’s chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani.
“We are trying to regularise all the flights for the day. But there would be some delay of flights today (Saturday). I am expecting a delay of around two hours. Because in morning, the whole system got disturbed,” added Lohani.
Lohani said that Air India uses a ‘passenger services system’, which looks after check-in, baggage and reservation, belonging to SITA and ‘it was taken for maintenance today morning’ by them. “After that, there were some technical glitches, because of which, the system was not functional. There were some major problems at big airports such as Delhi,” informed Lohani.
SITA regretted the inconvenience caused and said it had experienced a complex system issue during server maintenance early morning which resulted in operational disruption to flights.
“We have now fully restored services at all airports where Air India were affected. Our priority remains, as always, to ensure a stable system where customers can conduct business efficiently and effectively, and we are undertaking a full investigation to understand the root cause and prevent a recurrence,” the company said in a statement to this agency.
Many passengers vented their ire on social media as the airline could not issue them the boarding passes, Saturday morning.