india

Updated: Apr 29, 2019 01:08 IST

The cascading effect of a software glitch a day earlier continued to impact Air India operations as 137 flights were delayed on Sunday. The average delay time was two hours, the airline said.

Air India’s chairman and managing director, Ashwani Lohani, said that flight operations should be back on track by Monday.

“The cascading effect has affected approximately 50,000 passengers and more will be affected. Since the entire schedule was disrupted, aircraft are reaching late and since the same aircraft operated multiple flights, things are taking time to be back to normal. However, rescheduling and reduction in turnaround time have helped in restricting the number of delays,” said an airline official on condition of anonymity.

The turnaround refers to the time required to unload a plane after its arrival and to prepare it for departure again.

At least 20,000 passengers were stranded for hours at domestic and overseas airports on Saturday after the software that runs Air India’s main computer server developed the glitch. The software enables the airline to hand out boarding passes and handle check-in baggage. The system provided by SITA, a company that offers communication and information technology services to the air transport industry, was under scheduled maintenance between 3.30am and 4.30am on Saturday before running into the snag that was eventually fixed at around 9am. On Saturday, SITA said it experienced a complex system issue during server maintenance early in the morning, which resulted in operational disruption of Air India flights. SITA added they have fully restored services at all airports where Air India flights were affected.

“Our priority remains, as always, to ensure a stable system where customers can conduct business efficiently and effectively, and we are undertaking a full investigation to understand the root cause and prevent a recurrence,’’ a spokesperson for SITA said on Saturday morning. About 155 flights were delayed by an average of two hours because of the technical glitch on Saturday.