Terminal Trouble: The two-hour chaos that brought Mumbai International Airport to a crawl

“Sitting in the plane for close to an hour now!! Still no clue when we will take off. Crazy chaos at Mumbai airport.”

This tweet by a flyer on Thursday in Mumbai summed up the experience of thousands of people, who were at Mumbai Airport’s T2 terminal after a network cable fault led to inordinate delays.

What exactly happened at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport? How were passengers affected? How long before services resumed normalcy? We take a closer look and give you all the answers.

Chaos unleashed

Around 6 pm on Thursday, people began to flood Twitter with complaints of complete chaos at Mumbai Airport’s Terminal 2. Passengers faced a tough time in completing the check-in process for their flights as the Internet server at the facility went down for over two hours.

Airlines had to issue boarding passes manually, leading to long queues and people getting frustrated and angry. Visuals flooded social media showing huge queues at all counters for baggage drop during the down period.

Mumbai airport server is down from past 2 hours no flights taking off. We are sitting idle for an hour in Delhi bound flight @CPMumbaiPolice hope it’s not a cyber attack in view of G20 Summit. 2 hours is a long time. @republic @ZeeNews #G20Presidency @narendramodi @AmitShah

— Ahàm Bràhmasmī (@Vedchetan) December 1, 2022

A passenger shared his experience at the airport, the second busiest after the one in Delhi, on Twitter. “Got in after waiting for close to one and half hour at the baggage drop counter,” he wrote, cautioning other passengers about flying from Mumbai on Thursday.

Terrible situation in Mumbai T2 Airport at the moment. Server failure. Full chaos. If you're flying from Mumbai today, exercise caution. Got in after waiting for close to one and half hour at the baggage drop counter. #MumbaiAirport

— Bastab K Parida (@ParidaBastab) December 1, 2022

Another flyer claimed that the systems went down just as she was getting her bags checked-in.

The sheer timing of you placing your bag for check in and all systems going down at that exact moment at Mumbai Airport @CSMIA_Official!