A DigiYatra disruption at Kolkata airport left passengers facing QR-code scanning failures, facial-recognition difficulties and queues at the entry gates on Tuesday and Wednesday, before airport officials said the technical problems had been resolved.
Passengers reported that DigiYatra kiosks were unable to scan digital boarding-pass QR codes, while some also questioned the reliability of facial recognition. The failures led to overcrowding at the entry points, particularly around Gates 1 and 2, according to passenger accounts cited by the Times of India.
A Kolkata airport official said the disruption was brief and lasted approximately 30 to 45 minutes. “It was not an extended outage. A technical snag occurred which lasted approximately 30 to 45 minutes, and our technical teams rectified it immediately,” the official said.
The official added that periodic maintenance and occasional system recalibrations could result in intermittent problems. The airport said operations were restored after technical teams intervened.
A second senior airport official attributed the sharper disruption to an unexpected telecom network failure. “There was an outage on one of these days when the telecom network went completely down,” the official said, adding that passengers were informed while maintenance teams worked on the problem. According to the official, the operational snags have since been addressed.
The disruption also renewed complaints from frequent flyers about the way DigiYatra entry is implemented at Kolkata airport. Passenger Harold Finch said on social media that Central Industrial Security Force personnel advised travellers to keep their phone-screen brightness high while generating or displaying QR codes. He also criticised the performance of facial recognition.
Another passenger, Sujit Goswami, said the DigiYatra kiosks at Gates 1 and 2 failed to scan QR codes during his visit. In a post on X, he alleged that the malfunction was not addressed quickly enough and that the resulting congestion affected the entry points.
At Airports Authority of India-operated airports, entry gates follow a two-step validation process requiring both a QR-code scan and a biometric facial match. An airport official described the dual requirement as an additional layer of operational security.
The arrangement differs from procedures reported by passengers at privately operated hubs such as Delhi and Mumbai, where entry can be completed through facial recognition without rescanning a digital boarding-pass QR code. The official said removing the QR-code step would require changes across the AAI network.
For passengers, the incident highlighted the operational dependence of a supposedly faster airport-entry system on several linked components: a working telecom connection, functioning kiosks, readable QR codes and reliable facial-recognition equipment. The airport has said the immediate disruption was contained and that the affected services are now operational.
