Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA), Hyderabad, India - July 19, 2024

A major cloud services outage by Microsoft has caused significant disruptions across India, severely impacting operations at the airport in southern India's Telangana.

Visuals showed distressed passengers waiting and frustrated due to cancellation of flights.

According to reports, as of Friday afternoon, 36 flights in and out of RGIA were cancelled, including 19 departures and 17 arrivals. The affected routes include popular destinations such as Bangalore, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam, Cochin, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Raipur, and Jaipur.

Allegedly, RGIA issued an advisory stating, “Due to a global IT outage, airline services have been impacted. We are closely working with all our stakeholders to minimise the inconvenience to our flyers. Please contact the relevant airline for updates on your flight information.”

The list of cancelled flights includes:
- 6E 6646 HYD-CJB (Dep: 17:30)
- 6E 2486 HYD-TIR (Dep: 18:10)
- 6E 695 HYD-COK (Dep: 23:00)
- 6E 6591 TIR-HYD (Arr: 20:45)
- 6E 764 CJB-HYD (Arr: 21:25)
- 6E 742 COK-HYD (Arr: 22:20)
- And several more.

Similarly, both Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport and Hyderabad’s airport faced disruptions due to system outages. Bengaluru experienced 53 flight cancellations, while in Hyderabad, although systems were restored by 12:50 a.m. on Saturday, 24 additional flights were canceled affecting various routes.
Despite efforts to restore normal operations, affected passengers remain concerned about refunds and rebooking. This incident highlights the risks associated with relying on cloud services for critical infrastructure and the far-reaching impact on global travel and logistics.

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