Airport Diary: At around quarter to one in the afternoon, I was engrossed in a news related to Bangalore airport. Suddenly a message flashed on my phone. This message was an X message sent by Indigo, which informed about an outage in Microsoft’s server. Along with this, it was informed that due to this outage, many flights of the country and the world have been affected. As soon as I saw the message, I talked to some officials of Delhi airport and wanted to know the situation there. From the manner of conversation, it was clear that everything is not well at the airport.
After finding out the condition of the airport, I started filing news about it. Meanwhile, I got a call from the office and was asked to go to the airport and find out the situation with my own eyes. At around 2 pm, I was in front of Gate No. 1 of Terminal 3 of IGI Airport. As soon as I reached the airport, my first sight went to the long queues at the terminal gate. After this, I saw that the check-in kiosks outside the terminal which used to be crowded till yesterday, were deserted today, as if there was no point in them being there. By now, I had moved ahead and reached Gate No. 4.
Then my eyes fell on the live check-in information display board in front of gate number four. Although there was information about some foreign flights on one or two screens of the display board, all the other screens were showing technical error with blue color. A young woman named Neetu, standing with her mother near these screens, was sometimes trying to search something on the display screen and sometimes on her phone. Meanwhile, after introducing myself, I asked her if she had a flight. The answer came – yes. She had to leave for Mumbai by Indigo flight. I asked her, you have not gone inside the terminal yet.
Check-in kiosks lying closed outside Terminal 3 of IGI Airport.
The reply came- I am not able to find out the status of the flight, I am trying to find out. I told them that I will know this only after going inside. To this, their reply was that I do not know how much the flight is delayed. I may get stuck inside. That is why I am trying to find out the status of the flight. After talking to Neetu, I went to gate number eight and saw that the situation was almost the same at all the gates. Everywhere passengers were standing in a state of confusion. In the name of information, they only seemed to have frustration in their hands. After this, I entered the terminal from the visitor entry gate at around 2:45 in the afternoon.
When I looked at the check-in area from the glass gate, the entire check-in area was completely jam packed. There were long queues at the Indigo Airlines counter. Some staff were trying to manage the passengers, while some were busy filling the flight details in the boarding pass. Since the entire process was manual, it was taking approximately four to five minutes to clear one passenger. By now it was four in the evening. On my call, some airport officials came there. After listening to what they told me, I realized that the situation was worse than what was visible to the eyes.
As soon as the information appeared on the display board, a ray of hope arose among the passengers.
He said that the struggle is not only to get the boarding pass after entering the terminal, another big struggle is that the passengers whose flight has been cancelled have to wait for a long time to get out of the terminal. He said that the passengers whose flight has been cancelled can be taken out of the terminal only after the paperwork is completed. Since most of the staff is busy giving and managing boarding cards to the passengers, the passengers coming out of the terminal are also having a lot of trouble. As time was passing, the crowd was continuously increasing inside and outside the airport.
It was 7 in the evening. Suddenly all the live check-in information display boards outside the terminal started working. Flight check-in information started getting displayed on them. With this, the hope arose among the passengers that now everything is probably fine. Soon everything will become normal at the airport. But, the reality was somewhat different from the hopes. The situation inside the airport was still the same as before. Meanwhile, the news came that IndiGo has cancelled all 192 flights that were to operate till 5 in the morning. After this news came, there was a lot of commotion at the airport. By 10 in the night, the situation at the airport had gone out of control instead of improving. Now everyone is waiting for the situation to improve as soon as possible.
Tags: Airport Diaries, Aviation News, Delhi airport, airport
FIRST PUBLISHED : July 19, 2024, 23:16 IST
