A global technology outage involving airline reservation platform Navitaire briefly disrupted operations of carriers including IndiGo and Akasa Air on Thursday morning, before systems were restored within about half an hour, according to two people familiar with the matter. No major flight delays were reported.
A technical issue had affected Navitaire's platform, which is used by several airlines to manage reservations, check-in services and departure control systems. The outage first affected airlines in the Asia-Pacific region and then impacted some carriers in Europe, one person said, requesting anonymity because the matter is under review.
A Navitaire spokesperson said a maintenance change unexpectedly led to network instability.
“On February 19th, a planned maintenance change unexpectedly led to network instability for Navitaire hosted airlines. Technical teams took immediate action, and the issue was fully resolved after 50 minutes. We apologize for any inconvenience caused to our customers. All services are currently operating normally,” the company spokesperson said in an emailed response to Mint.
“The server of the software company was down from 6.45 am to 7.28 am this morning, impacting check-in services across airlines and airports in India. A similar glitch was noticed around 8.10 am onwards. Normalcy in operations happened post-8.25 am. No further glitches have been reported in the last few hours. The system remains stable,” an airport official said, requesting anonymity.
“Passengers were unable to complete web check-in; airport check-in counters were non-functional and entry into the terminal was stalled. Everyone was left waiting outside with no clear timeline for resolution,” Vivek Kumar, a passenger on an Air India Express flight from Ranchi, said on LinkedIn.
An official from an airline that was briefly affected by hiccups in its passenger check-in service, confirmed the outage and the time stamps.
The operations have now normalized and are under observation, the second person said.
Navitaire’s website lists IndiGo, Air India Express, Akasa Air and SpiceJet among its Indian customers. Minneapolis-based Navitaire is a subsidiary of Amadeus and provides technology services to more than 60 airlines and rail companies.
An official at Akasa Air, requesting anonymity, said the airline’s operations remain unaffected. IndiGo officials said systems were restored within “half an hour” and operations continue to be normal. There were no cancellations or delays.
Issue resolved
An Air India Express official said its web check-in facilities were working and its operations remain unaffected.
“There were brief issues with the passenger check-in counters at airports. But it has been resolved. No flights were delayed,” an airline official said.
Air India, the full-service carrier, did not face any disruption as the airline does not use the Navitaire software.
Emails sent to IndiGo, Air India Express, Akasa Air and SpiceJet seeking official comments on the outage did not elicit a response till the publication of this story.
“The Navitaire outage exposed an over-reliance on this passenger service system by the low-cost carriers," said Ashish Chhawchharia, partner and aviation industry leader at Grant Thornton Bharat. "… this recent event prompts us to think of backup systems, regional redundancies, as well as need for regulatory oversight on such critical infrastructure. A balanced approach will preserve efficiency while minimizing risks of large-scale disruptions in the future."
In July 2024, a massive tech failure caused travel chaos around the world, with banking and healthcare services also badly hit. Flights were grounded because of the IT outage – a flaw that left many computers displaying blue error screens.
The cause was then attributed to cyber-security firm CrowdStrike updating its antivirus software, which is designed to protect Microsoft Windows devices from malicious attacks. According to data analytics firm Curium, out of 411,009 globally scheduled passenger flights over a 72-hour period (during the July 2024 outage) 16,896 flights were canceled, representing over 4% of global flights. This cancellation rate was double that of the previous week, which stood at 1.9%.
In December 2025, some Indian airlines reported a software glitch across their systems leading to issues with passenger check-in services. Air India had put out a post on X on 2 December saying that “a third-party system disruption” affected check-in systems at various airports, “resulting in delays across multiple airlines, including Air India.”