Indian sky full of foreign airlines as Microsoft outage grounds most local ones

The vast expanse of Indian skies, typically teeming with aircraft, bore an eerie emptiness on Friday. A colossal Microsoft outage had thrown the nation's air travel into disarray. Indian airlines such as IndiGo, Air India, SpiceJet and Akasa Air were grappling with technical chaos resulting in grounded planes, halted ticket bookings and disrupted check-ins.

As per flightaware.com, at precisely 2:06 PM, All Nippon 837, en route from Tokyo to New Delhi, was closing in on its destination. Simultaneously, high above Uttar Pradesh, Thai Airways 922 was journeying from Bangkok to Frankfurt, while Flynas 9400 soared towards Dhaka from Madina. Vistara 184 streaked across the sky bound for Mumbai from Dhaka and somewhere above Madhya Pradesh, Singapore Airlines 318 flew from Singapore to London.

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IndiGo flights, usually dotting the sky like stars, were scarce. Among the few, IndiGo 5331 was making its way to New Delhi from Bangalore.

This sweeping disruption was attributed to a significant glitch in Microsoft’s cloud services, leading to widespread flight delays and cancellations, not only in India but around the globe. Delhi and Mumbai airports bore the brunt of this unprecedented technical failure echoing the turbulence experienced by countless travellers.