New Delhi: Hundreds of passengers faced a harrowing time at the Delhi airport early Monday as the server of the immigration system encountered technical glitches and six flights were delayed.
An Air India official told PTI that the immigration system server was down for more than 40 minutes since 12.20 am. At around 1 am, the official also said crew for three Air India flights were stuck and that no timeline has been given by immigration authority to resolve the issue.
A passenger, who was waiting for immigration check, said there has been a long delay due to server issues. A public announcement was also made at the airport about the server problem and that personnel have started doing manual checking process, according to the passenger, who is to take an Air India flight to San Francisco.
Many passengers took to Twitter to complain about the delay in immigration process and some of them also tweeted pictures of long queues at the airport.
The incident comes a day after Air India’s Passenger Service System faced technical glitches and was not functional for more than five hours.
The incident on Saturday early morning had also resulted in delay of scores of Air India flights. The Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) is the busiest airport in the country.
Although the technical snags were restored in five hours, the ripple effect that it had created led to the delay of over a hundred flights during the weekend.
On Saturday, 149 Air India flights were delayed because of the software shutdown that left several passengers stranded at airports. According to the carrier, the server was down from 3 am due to which the boarding passes were not issued to travellers at airports across the world.
The crowd at the Mumbai airport had affected passengers travelling through other airlines. Meanwhile, the British Airways responded to a flyer’s tweet, saying, “…we can only advise to try and get through the airport as quickly as possible. If you do miss a connecting flight, the staff at the airport should do their best to assist.”
It may be noted that a similar situation happened on 23 June last year where the glitch in the check-in software delayed 25 flights across India. The average number of flights that Air India group is 674 on a daily basis. On Sunday, a total of 137 flights were delayed.