Mumbai airport delays are heavy again on Wednesday, a day after a network outage forced IndiGo and Air India staff to check passengers in by hand. The outage hit around 7:05 p.m. local time on Tuesday and lasted about 50 minutes, according to Indian media. On Wednesday, more than a third of departures at India's second-busiest airport are running late.
Latest Updates
Wednesday, 11:30 a.m. ET: Delays are heavy again. As of Wednesday evening in Mumbai, 168 of the airport's 470 departures so far had been delayed, about 36%, and 10 had been canceled, according to flight tracking data. That's one of the worst delay rates of any major airport in the world today. Neither the airport nor the airlines have said what caused Tuesday's outage, or whether it's linked to Wednesday's delays.
Tuesday, 2:49 p.m. ET: A network outage hit Mumbai's airport around 7:05 p.m. local time. Check-in desks and boarding pass scanners slowed, and IndiGo and Air India staff processed passengers by hand. About 4 in 10 departures were delayed on Tuesday.
What Happened
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport called it "a temporary network disruption." While the systems were down, self-service kiosks, check-in desks, bag drops and boarding pass scanners slowed or stopped working, and staff switched to issuing boarding passes and tagging bags by hand. Gate changes and crew delays added to the confusion, according to Hindustan Times, as reported by Gulf News.
Mumbai · Updated Wednesday, Oct. 28
The Outage Is Over. Delays Are Still Heavy
Check your IndiGo or Air India flight in the app before you leave, and leave extra time at the airport.
Contrail
The airport said "no impact on airport and flight operations has been recorded." Flight tracking data tells a different story. About 4 in 10 flights leaving Mumbai on Tuesday were delayed, and as of just after midnight local time, the most recent departures were still running a median of about half an hour late. On Wednesday, delays were heavy again.
Why Mumbai Runs Late
It isn't clear how much of Wednesday's trouble comes from Tuesday's outage. When a busy airport falls behind in the evening, planes and crews can end the night in the wrong places, and the next morning's flights start late. But Mumbai is also one of the most crowded airports in the world, with little spare room in its schedule, and it often runs heavy delays even on a normal day.
I've flown through Mumbai, and even on a normal day the airport can get packed, especially in the very early morning, when a big wave of flights leaves in the small hours. When anything goes wrong on top of that rush, the lines at check-in and security get long fast.
If You're Flying Through Mumbai
If you're flying IndiGo or Air India out of Mumbai, check your flight status in the airline's app before leaving for the airport, and give yourself extra time at check-in and security. If you're connecting through Mumbai, keep an eye on your first flight's actual departure time, and ask your airline about rebooking early if your connection looks tight. A delay caused by an airport systems outage usually isn't the airline's fault, so don't count on compensation, but airlines will generally rebook you if you miss a connection on the same ticket.
