Issue Resolved, Flight Schedule Being Followed Now: MoS Mohol On Microsoft Outage

NEW DELHI: A day after the Microsoft outage severely impacted flight operations across the country, Union Minister of State, Murlidhar Mohol said on Saturday that passengers are no longer facing any issues and that flight schedules are being adhered to as usual.

The outage had impacted various sectors, causing significant delays and inconvenience to passengers. However, with the resolution of the issue, normalcy has been restored, Murlidhar Mohol, MOS for Ministry of Civil Aviation confirmed.

Speaking to ANI, Mohol said, “Today the Microsoft issue has also been solved. The schedule like before is being followed now in the whole country again, and passengers are not facing any trouble. The DGCA has said that flight operations have begun normally again. Yesterday the whole system collapsed, but it is okay now.”

Meanwhile, passengers at various airports across the country were seen facing issues for the second day. Many passengers were seen waiting outside the airport following the global Microsoft outage on Friday.

Passengers at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai complained about the difficulties they faced.

A passenger said they faced a lot of problems because of the outrage, adding that he had not slept the whole night.

“I was travelling from Mumbai to Bengaluru yesterday. The flight got cancelled…Although we were provided with the service, but they did not accommodate us. We had to wait for the whole night and have not slept for the whole night,” the passenger said.

Meanwhile, Chennai Airport flights also faced disruptions as air traffic is affected due to the blue screen error for the second day.

A passenger named Prabakaran who came to catch a flight to the Maldives said he is clueless about where to stay.

“From tomorrow (Sunday), my work permit gets over, so I am in a must-go situation to go to the Maldives today (Saturday), but due to the cancelled flight, I have been asked to go tomorrow. I am clueless about where to stay and about job assurance,” he said.

Earlier on Friday, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issued an advisory, CIAD-2024-0035, addressing the severe outage impacting Microsoft Windows systems.

“It is a technical glitch. Because if you look at cyber security it consists of three things, confidentiality, integrity and availability. It has affected the availability aspect. So it has not affected anything other than availability. Its impact in India was much less as compared to the Western countries.

And the reason is that it has to be purchased separately and not many people have bought it as a tool to protect themselves. There are other competing products available as well and people use those products instead of using CrowdStrike,” the statement read.

Notably, the outage affected companies across various sectors, from airlines, banks, food chains, and brokerage houses, to news organisations and railway networks. The travel industry was greatly affected, causing significant delays in flights across the world. (ANI)