Akshay Kothari, co-founder of a software company in San Francisco, travelled from Hyderabad to Calcutta on a handwritten boarding pass, his first-ever, as the the Microsoft global outage since Friday morning disrupted airports and airline schedules.

“The Microsoft / CrowdStrike outage has taken down most airports in India. I got my first hand-written boarding pass today,” Kothari posted on X (formerly Twitter) while India along with the world was trying to come to terms with the impact of the outage and look for quick-fixes.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s minister for railways and electronics and information technology, posted on X: “MEITY is in touch with Microsoft and its associates regarding the global outage. The reason for this outage has been identified and updates have been released to resolve the issue. CERT is issuing a technical advisory. NIC network is not affected.”

While the Indian minister and Microsoft assured that the situation was gradually improving, ground reports suggested otherwise as the reasons behind the outage and its impact remained uncovered.

The website DownDetector, which keeps track of user-reported internet outages, cited 46 per cent problems in logging in, 33 per cent in usage of websites and 20 per cent concerning various apps in the Microsoft store. The same for Microsoft Office; 50 per cent of the complaints were on logging in, while for the website and apps it was 25 per cent each.

A software solutions engineer, Ashish Jha, flying from Adelaide to Hobart, complained of a long night at the Adelaide airport: “The day I decided to fly Jetstar, it decides to have a Global outage preventing people from checking in. The planes are grounded until this resolves. This night at Adelaide Airport will be long.”

Jha was not alone. Flyers across the globe from San Francisco to Edinburgh complained of the chaotic scenes at airports caused by the outage.

India was no different; the disruption in services started being reported from around 10.40am.

Till 3pm, 25 flights to and from the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport were cancelled on Friday.

According to an official at the NCSBI Airport, departures of 14 flights and 11 arrivals of various airlines were affected through the day.

“As worldwide systems are impacted due to ongoing IT outage, flight operations are disrupted across the country. This may affect travel and flight schedules. Hence passengers are requested to kindly contact scheduled airlines for updates,” the Airports Authority of India posted on X.

Boarding passes at Calcutta airport, like Hyderabad airport and elsewhere in the country, were issued manually as the automatic system remained non-functional.

The Cochin International Airport found a mention in the list of airports mentioned by the real-time flight tracker website Flightradar24 among the most disrupted airports globally.

As the impact of the outage peaked in the afternoon, confusion prevailed in the airports. At Delhi airport, the gate screens were blank, flights were held at the gate. For some of the airlines, passengers were allowed to board, while others were made to stand at the gates.

"Due to a major global system outage, all gate screens at DEL (Delhi airport) are blank. Flights are being held at the gate. Some gates boarding pax (passengers) and holding on board, some flights holding pax at gate itself, which is better. Seems to be impacting many airports and airlines," Sanjiv Kapoor, executive vice-president (strategies) of Saudia Airlines and former CEO of Jet Airways 2.0, posted on X.

In a statement released on X around 2.19 pm, Spicejet announced: “A global technical outage has affected the aviation industry. Spicejet is ensuring that all its flights scheduled for today will depart. We are working closely with airports and relevant authorities to minimize disruptions and ensure the safety and comfort of our passengers. We appreciate your understanding and patience during this time.”

The impact was more on passengers flying out of high-density airports like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai.

"A global outage with the Navitaire Departure Control System (DCS) has been affecting operations of some airlines across their network, including BLR Airport since 10:40 IST on July 19, 2024. Indigo, Akasa, and SpiceJet in T1 and Air India Express in T2 are among the impacted airlines," a Bengaluru airport spokesperson said.

The Common Use Terminal Equipment (CUTE) and Common Use Self Service (CUSS) systems are also experiencing disruptions, the airport operator said adding that in response to this situation, IndiGo, Air India Express, SpiceJet and Akasa have taken proactive measures by initiating manual check-ins to ensure minimal disruption to passengers and flight schedules.

According to preliminary data by aviation analytics firm Cirium on the global IT disruption, 56 flights were cancelled out of 3,652 flights scheduled from Indian destinations. This does not include inbound flights to India.

Civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu assured the passengers that the ministry and the AAI are actively managing the situation using manual methods to ensure minimal disruption.

"We have instructed all airlines and airport authorities to keep passengers informed about their flight status and provide necessary assistance," Naidu was quotes as having said.

Minister of state for civil aviation Murlidhar Mohol said the ministry and aviation safety regulator DGCA were closely monitoring the situation.

The minister said that instructions have been issued to private airlines to promptly inform passengers about the disruptions.

A Microsoft spokesperson was quoted as having said: "We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming. We're aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform."