Flight operations were disrupted on Thursday morning at key airports due to a 45-minute technical glitch in Navitaire, the airline booking and check-in system. The issue began around 6:45 am at Indira Gandhi International Airport and was resolved by 7:30 am.
During the outage, IndiGo, Akasa Air, and Air India Express had to process passenger details manually, causing long queues during the morning rush. The technical snag also affected some airlines in parts of the Asia-Pacific and Europe, causing delays in check-ins and boarding.
The disruption coincided with heightened activity at Delhi airport because of the AI Summit.
What is Navitaire?
Navitaire is a travel technology company that provides software which airlines and some trains use to manage bookings, tickets, check‑ins, and revenue.
It operates globally and is not an airline itself but the platform many carriers rely on to sell tickets and manage flights.
Who Owns Navitraire?
Navitaire is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global travel tech group Amadeus IT Group, headquartered in Minneapolis with a presence across Europe, Asia and Australia.
What Navitaire Does
- Passenger reservations and e‑commerce - Navitaire's booking platform (often known as New Skies) handles flight reservations, shopping, offer/order processing and digital sales. It includes seat selection and ancillary services like baggage or meals.
- Check‑in and departure control - The system supports day‑of‑travel processes such as check‑in, boarding and baggage tracking at airports.
- Revenue management and accounting - It helps airlines forecast demand, set prices dynamically, manage revenue accounts and optimise profitability.
- Ancillary sales and retailing - Navitaire's tools let airlines sell add‑ons (eg, upgrades, priority boarding) and personalise offers throughout a passenger's journey.
Who Uses Navitaire?
Navitaire serves more than 60 airline and rail customers worldwide. These are especially low‑cost and hybrid carriers - those that sell most tickets online and rely heavily on digital retailing and ancillary revenue.
Clients include major budget airlines like Ryanair (a long‑time partner) and other low‑cost operators around the world.
In India, carriers such as Akasa Air, Air India Express, IndiGo, SpiceJet have chosen Navitaire systems to power their reservations and sales technology.
Navitaire's Cloud Adoption
Navitaire has transitioned its entire airline platform to cloud infrastructure (Microsoft Azure), which helps improve scalability, speed and reliability while supporting modern retailing concepts like IATA's Offer & Order standards.
