Technical glitch in Microsoft delays several flights, passengers, kin suffer
Neeraj Bagga
Amritsar, July 19
A technical snag in global Microsoft affected air passengers as several flights got delayed. The snag had the least impact on banking, business transactions and railways services.
Consequently, six flights, including Amritsar-Srinagar, Delhi-Amritsar, Bangalore and London were delayed at the Sri Guru Ram Das Jee International Airport. Besides, issuing of online boarding passes was delayed due to the snag.
Mangal Singh, a resident of Kapurthala, said he came to the airport to receive his daughter, who was coming from Canada via Delhi in an Air India flight. The flight reached Delhi airport on time, but it did not arrive at the Amritsar airport till 4 pm. He said as per schedule, the flight was to land here at 2 pm. He said there was no announcement for the delay in the arrival of flight.
Establishments, especially those using Microsoft’s Window 10 operating system, were hit by “Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)” on running an update of the operating system. Officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) at the Amritsar airport said computers affected by the snag were running a message “It looks like Windows did not load correctly. If you would like to restart and try again, choose restart”. They said computers run on Windows 10 got stuck on restarting after the updates. Some airlines shifted to manual check-in which led to delays.
Umang Maini, Lead District Manager, said there was no impact of Microsoft outage on business transactions in 400 branches of nationalised and private banks in the district. He said these branches do not use Windows 10 and 11. He said the Microsoft outage was limited only to airport. He said the sang affected ATMs run on Windows.
A senior railway official engaged in ticket booking said there was no impact on the Microsoft outage on online booking at the local office. He said since all trains were recording hundred per cent ticket booking so there was no scope for Tatkal booking which commences 25 minutes before the departure of a train.
