NEW DELHI : Mumbai International airport faced disruption in flight operations for around three hours on Dec 1 as the check-in facilities powered by IT service provider SITA suffered a technical glitch. As a result, airlines had to manually check-in passengers, leading to chaos at the airport and flight delays. The software powering the check-in facilities was restored after around three hours.
“A Tata fibre optic cable was cut in a construction work related to the metro and as a result, the check-in facilities and baggage drop procedure at Terminal 2 was halted,” an airport official said.
Geneva-based SITA provides passenger handling technology to India’s second busiest Mumbai airport. It also provides common-use check-in and boarding, along with self-service kiosks, baggage reconciliation system, which ensures the right bag is on the right plane with the right passenger.
“There was a network interruption resulting from a cable cut during some construction work in the city. This interrupted the various ticketing systems. All systems are now restored and working,” a Mumbai International airport spokesperson said.
The airport had asked passengers to allocate additional time for check-in as manual processing was initiated to facilitate the passengers.
The halt of IT-enabled flight operations affected the check-in process, leading to long queues of anxious passengers, and while there have been no cancellations due to this but flight delays were recorded, another airport official said.
As the metro airport handles heavy air traffic being the second busiest airport in the country, one flight delay leads to a spillover effect and flight operations are expected to take some time to return to normalcy, he said, adding that passengers departing from Mumbai airport should check their flight timings and keep additional time in hand before reaching the airport.
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