Civil Aviation Minister confirms airline systems back to normal following major outage

New Delhi, July 20: The Minister of Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mahol confirmed in an official notice issued on Saturday that airline systems across Indian airports have resumed normal operations since 3 AM.

The minister stated, "Since 3 AM in the night, Airline systems across airports have started working normally. Flight operations are going smoothly now. There is a backlog because of disruptions yesterday and it is getting cleared gradually. By noon today, we expect all issues to be resolved. We are constantly monitoring the operations at our airports and also with the airlines ensuring travel readjustments and refunds are taken care of. We thank you for your patience."

The disruption, which began on Friday, was linked to a severe outage impacting Microsoft Windows systems.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) issued an advisory, addressing the widespread issue caused by the latest update of the CrowdStrike agent, Falcon Sensor.

This update led to system crashes and the "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD), affecting numerous Windows hosts equipped with the CrowdStrike Falcon Sensor.

Reports indicated that the update had caused stability issues, rendering many systems inoperable.

In response, CrowdStrike reverted the changes made in the recent update. However, for hosts experiencing crashes, CERT-In recommended specific mitigation steps.

Union Minister for Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, assured the public that the government was in close contact with Microsoft to address the issue.

"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. The NIC network is not affected," the minister stated on Friday.

Microsoft also acknowledged the outage affecting its online services globally, including in India.

In its latest update, Microsoft reported continuous improvements in its services as mitigation actions progressed.

The resumption of normal airline operations comes as a relief to many travelers who faced significant delays and disruptions due to the system outage.