Air India SITA server restored after hours of global shutdown, delay in flights expected

After hours of global shutdown, the SITA server of Air India has finaly been restored but the flight operations of the state-run carrier may see consequential delays, the airline's CMD Ashwani Lohani informed on Saturday. "Between 3:30 to 4:30 am today, passenger services system of Air India that is run by SITA was taken for maintenance & after that it remained down till 8:45 am, it has just come back. System restored. During the day we will see consequential delays," Lohani said.

Earlier in the day, the server of Air India went down across the world, resulting in chaos and delay in several flights. Thousands of passengers were stranded in India and other parts of the world due to the SITA server shutdown.

Hundreds of passengers were stranded at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, while over 2,000 were caught in the chaos at Mumbai airport. The airline had "deeply regretted" the inconvenience caused to the passengers due to the technical glitch.

The flights of Air India were disrupted since 3.30 am on Saturday morning. People stranded at several airports took to social media to express their anguish with the national carrier’s services.

"@airindiain's birthday gift to me, spending the day in overcrowded delhi airport (all the crowd due to airindia's various flights) with no real updates on next steps. We understand server crashes can happen, but when it's over 4 hrs u really need to do something abt it (sic)," tweeted one of the passenger stranded at Delhi’s IGI airport.

Bollywood filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri also had to face the trouble due to the issue. He had to return home after waiting for couple of hours at the airport. "Air India server crashed since 3.30AM. All flights cancelled. Thousands of passengers stranded at the airport. Nobody knows what is happening. Don’t go to the airport without confirming. I am also going back after spending couple of hours," he tweeted.

People at Sydney airport in Australia also faced similar issues and they were not able to check in due to the server issues.

@airindiain passengers unable to checkin at Sydney airport .reason. airindia system issues. pic.twitter.com/2METzywnBP

— pa (@pratishrut) April 27, 2019