Mumbai Airport Outage Forces Manual Check-In as 327 Flights Lag

What happened on Tuesday evening

At about 7:05 pm on Tuesday, October 27, a network failure hit Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA). It came during the evening departure rush, and staff at check-in counters and boarding gates had to process passengers by hand.26 Self-service kiosks and digital check-in systems stopped responding. IndiGo and Air India ground staff issued paper boarding passes and tagged bags manually, and extra staff were sent to the departure halls as queues grew.4

The airport's private operator, Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL), confirmed what it called a temporary network disruption. It said its teams had switched to manual processing to limit inconvenience and keep essential services running.19 MIAL also said the disruption had so far had no impact on airport or flight operations. It did not say how long the problem lasted or what caused it.11

Tracking data shows a rougher evening than that statement suggests. Flightradar24 recorded an average departure delay of 50 minutes at Mumbai. It counted 327 delayed flights by about 9:30 pm and showed 13 per cent of flights cancelled.1318

The numbers don't line up, and the gap matters

The coverage agrees on the basic sequence but splits on almost every figure.

Duration. PTI's sources said the outage lasted more than an hour.1519 Hindustan Times, as relayed by Gulf News and Mint, put it at about 50 minutes.23 An airport official told Hindustan Times at 9:36 pm that systems were still fluctuating as operations recovered.5 The most likely explanation is that the core failure lasted under an hour but the knock-on effects ran well past it.

Scale. The 327 figure dominates the headlines, but it counts delays across the whole day up to 9:30 pm. It is not a count of flights hit by the outage. PTI's own report says it is unclear how many delays and cancellations were directly caused by the network failure.1019 Hindustan Times looked at a much narrower window. Of 44 passenger flights due to leave between 7 pm and 9 pm, 18 left at least an hour late and three were cancelled. Two more were still on the ground at 10:37 pm, almost two hours after their scheduled departure.5 A Hindi-language report said check-in was disrupted for 11 Air India flights and three IndiGo flights.8

Cancellations. ET Now said no cancellations had been reported.16 Other outlets cited the Flightradar24 figure of 13 per cent cancelled.17 Airlines also said the outage added to delays already building up because of air traffic control congestion.5

The best reading is this: the network failure caused real delays and some cancellations during a two-hour peak, on top of a day that was already running late. Headlines saying the outage "delayed 327 flights" overstate what can be pinned on it. MIAL's claim of no impact on flight operations understates it. The Hindustan Times figures, with 18 of 44 peak-hour departures at least an hour late, are the most credible measure of what the failure did.

Security lines: where automation failed most visibly

For passengers, the worst of it was at the terminal entrance and the security checkpoint. The failure took down check-in counters, boarding e-gates and DigiYatra, the facial-recognition entry system.5 People familiar with the situation said the automated entry e-gates stopped working, so Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel had to check passengers one by one, while also dealing with frustration in the queues.5 Boarding scanners slowed down, and gate changes and late crews added to the confusion in the departure halls.69

This is the structural problem the incident exposes. Indian airports have pushed hard into biometric entry and self-service bag drops, which speed things up on a normal day. They also make one network a single point of failure for check-in, identity checks and boarding together. Manual fallbacks kept passengers moving, but they are slow, and in a busy evening bank the delays add up quickly.5 Airport officials said the switch to manual mode followed established protocols.5 That suggests the backup plan existed and worked. What remains unknown is why the network failed and whether the fault was in MIAL's internal systems or with an outside provider.16

For anyone flying from Mumbai soon, the advice in the coverage is simple. Arrive a little earlier than usual, check flight status with the airline before leaving home, and keep a printed or saved copy of your ticket and ID ready in case digital systems go down again.412

Not a strike, but the same passenger problem

The coverage blames a network disruption, not industrial action. Still, for travellers the problem looks much the same as a strike: a disruption the airline didn't directly cause, followed by questions about who pays. That matters most for passenger rights.

What passengers are owed under DGCA rules

India's rules for delays and cancellations come from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), mainly Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) Section 3, Series M, Part IV. The key point is that a delay alone does not earn a cash payout in India. Depending on how long the delay lasts, airlines owe meals, a hotel where needed, an alternate flight or a refund.2123

Consumer guides describe the delay thresholds slightly differently. The widely cited version is that meals and refreshments start after roughly two to four hours, depending on the flight's length. At six hours, the passenger can choose a refund or an alternate flight. Hotel accommodation applies to long delays that run overnight.22

Cancellations work differently. If an airline cancels with less than 24 hours' notice, the passenger can take an acceptable alternate flight, or a full refund plus compensation.23 Compensation is the lower of the one-way basic fare plus fuel charge or a fixed amount based on flight length:

• ₹5,000 for flights of up to one hour
• ₹7,500 for flights of one to two hours
• ₹10,000 for flights longer than two hours

23

Refund timing changed this year. A revised refund CAR, dated 24 February 2026, took effect on 26 March 2026. It added a 48-hour look-in window for eligible direct bookings and requires refunds booked through agents or portals to be completed within 14 working days.23 Credit-card refunds are due within seven days.24 Airlines cannot make passengers take a travel voucher instead of cash.24 If an airline doesn't resolve a complaint, passengers can escalate it through the government's AirSewa portal.24

The force majeure question nobody has answered

The biggest open question for passengers on Tuesday's cancelled flights is whether the outage counts as an "extraordinary circumstance." Under the delay rules, airlines can withhold meals and hotels when the cause was extraordinary and could not reasonably have been avoided.23 For cancellations, force majeure removes the separate cash compensation but not the right to a refund.24 The usual examples are severe weather, air traffic control restrictions, security threats and natural disasters.26

A failure in the airport operator's own network doesn't fit neatly into any of those categories, and neither airlines nor the regulator has said how they will treat it. Airlines have one obvious argument: the fault was on MIAL's side, and the ATC congestion they mentioned is listed as force majeure.5 Passengers have an equally obvious reply: an IT failure at the country's second-busiest airport is an operational risk that can be planned for, not an act of God.17 The real test will be how airlines handle claims from passengers whose flights were cancelled that evening. Travellers should put their claims in writing and keep timestamped cancellation messages. Airlines rarely offer compensation without being asked.25

Why the timing makes this worse for Mumbai

The outage came two days after Adani Airport Holdings, IndiGo and the Air India Group announced on October 25 that they would move some services to Navi Mumbai International Airport. The move is meant to free up room for the redevelopment of CSMIA's ageing Terminal 1.6 IndiGo plans to start international flights from Navi Mumbai in February 2027. Air India Express is due to start four daily domestic flights there in December 2026.6 Rebuilding Terminal 1 will mean cutting capacity at CSMIA while the work goes on.6 In practice, the main airport will have less slack to absorb shocks like Tuesday's.

One commentator noted that MIAL, part of Adani Airport Holdings, could face scrutiny from investors and regulators if technical failures keep happening.20 That is speculation for now. The lesson for an airport already short of capacity is clearer: when check-in, security entry and boarding all depend on one network, a 50-minute outage can still be felt hours later. MIAL hasn't yet explained the cause, how long the failure actually lasted, or what it will change.