NEW DELHI: Just over half the 2,000 plus flights that IndiGo operates daily flew on time Saturday (October 5) when the airline suffered a massive system outage that led to serpentine queues across airports with boarding cards being issued manually. The Union aviation ministry’s data shows the impact the outage had on IndiGo on time performance (OTP) which fell to 54% on Saturday from 80.3% a day earlier.IndiGo in fact saw the lowest OTP on Saturday.
The DGCA has sought a report from the airline on the outage.
Comments have been sought from the airline on what caused the same and whats steps are being taken to prevent a recurrence. Govt data shows almost 4.5 lakh people flew within the country on Saturday, thanks to the festive rush weekend.
IndiGo, which flies almost 3 lakh passengers daily, both domestic and international, had witnessed a network-wide system outage on Saturday. This had led to long waiting for check-ins and baggage drops. Passengers posted pictures of long queues and handwritten boarding passes. While at 6 pm the airline said the issue was resolved, the backlog will take several hours to clear.
This July, a worldwide Microsoft outage had led to airport systems in India also going down for 17 hours. While about 300 flights had to be canceled (mostly IndiGo) then, the ones that operated did so with delays due to processes going manual.