Traveller in India given handwritten boarding pass as worldwide IT outage affects airports

Handwritten boarding pass given to man on Indian domestic flight

As an outage affecting Windows devices worldwide continues, airports have resorted to manual check-in processes.

That includes issuing handwritten boarding passes, according to a traveller in India who posted his on X.

Flight details totally handwritten on boarding pass

The photo, posted on Friday (19 July) afternoon, showed that every detail, including his name, flight number, departure date and time and even seat number were written out entirely by hand.

This is unlike a typical physical boarding pass where everything is printed out — or even digitalised inside one’s phone.

He said the Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage has taken down most airports in India, resulting in him getting his “first handwritten boarding pass”.

The man was travelling on IndiGo Airlines flight 6E376 from Hyderabad to Kolkata that day, according to the details reflected on the pass.

Handwritten boarding pass resulted in delay

The user’s post went viral on the social media platform, gained 11,000 shares.

Many netizens were amused, while some thought the handwritten boarding pass was a nice keepsake.

But another traveller who also received a similar boarding pass said there was a 30 minute delay, possibly due to a long queue for passengers to check in.

A commentator said it proved that the “old-school way is still the best way” when technology doesn’t work

Other airports going back to manual operations

Hyderabad was among many other airports around the world that had to go back to the basics thanks to the outage.

At Delhi Airport, a white board was seen set up which served as a departures board, where flight statuses were written in marker pen.

This needed to done when the actual flight information screens showed the blue screen of death.

Over at the airport in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the same situation was taking place.

Long queues form at airports, flight delayed & cancelled

The return to manual operations has caused chaos at airports.

A man at Belfast airport said the terminal is sweltering and packed with long queues of passengers, some sitting on the floor, as flights were delayed or cancelled.

Worse still, scant relief was at hand for hungry and thirsty passengers as card payment machines were down so some shops only could accept cash, he said.

Changi Airport also affected

Changi Airport didn’t escape the effects of the outage, with the airport saying on X that the IT systems of more than 10 airlines were affected.

Thus, the check-in processes for some airlines are being managed manually.

A whiteboard was also seen at Terminal 1, which listed the flight details for a number of Scoot flights.

A traveller said on X that Scoot’s check-in systems were “all down”, sharing a photo of large crowds at the airport.

The airport apologised for the inconvenience, adding that ground staff have been providing assistance to affected passengers, especially those with an impending departure.

It shared photos of staff offering refreshments to travellers.

In a Facebook update at 11.22pm, Scoot said services previously affected by the outage had been fully restored, and bookings and online check-in systems were back to normal.

Global IT outage caused by software update

The widespread IT outage was caused by a software update by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, one of the world’s most popular cybersecurity firms.

CrowdStrike Chief Executive Officer George Kurtz said on X that a “defect” was found in a “single content update” for Windows hosts.

He denied that the issue was due to a security incident or cyberattack, adding,

The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.

Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency has outlined four steps that users and administrators of affected systems can take to circumvent the issue.

Some S’pore financial institutions experienced disruptions: MAS

In a statement on Friday (19 July), the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said some of the Republic’s major financial institutions experienced disruptions to internal-facing systems used by staff.

However, critical systems were unaffected in all cases and no or limited impact on customers was reported.

“Access to the SGX’s (Singapore Exchange’s) post-trade system was temporarily disrupted, but other critical trading and clearing services were not affected,” MAS added.

The Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) said in a statement on Friday that Singapore Government services are not affected.

Neither are local banks, telcos and hospitals, it added.

However, several companies in Singapore delivering services to the public were affected, including check-in services for airlines, the publishing of newspapers and carparks.

Local newspaper The Straits Times has also been affected by the outage, it said.

MDDI is monitoring the impact of the outage and assisting companies to help them recover.

Also read: Windows devices affected by major IT outage, airports & banks affected

Windows devices affected by major IT outage, airports & banks affected

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Featured image adapted from akothari on X.