New Delhi: Flight operations at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport are still not normal, but “gradually improving” nearly 36 hours after a major technical glitch hit its Air Traffic Control (ATC) system.
The glitch occurred on Thursday evening and by Friday, flight schedules had been thrown out of gear at the country’s busiest airport. By Friday evening, the chaos had spread to airports across northern India with flights facing delays.
Flight tracking website Flightradar 24 has claimed that 129 flights (53 arrivals and 76 departures) were delayed on Saturday, as compared to the nearly 800 delays witnessed on Friday. The average delay for arrivals is five minutes, while for departures is around 19 minutes.
“The technical issue which affected the Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS), that supports the Air Traffic Control flight planning process, is gradually improving. Airline operations at Delhi Airport are returning to normal, and all concerned authorities are working diligently to minimise any inconvenience caused. Passengers are advised to stay in touch with their airlines for latest flight update,” a statement by the Delhi airport said on Saturday morning.
Apart from Air India, IndiGo Airlines was among those affected by the ATC glitch. The airline also issued a statement saying that operations are “progressively” being restored at the Delhi Airport.
“We are pleased to share that the temporary AMSS system outage affecting Air Traffic Control has now been resolved, and normal operations are being progressively restored at Delhi Airport and other impacted airports in the northern region. We appreciate the efforts of the airport and ATC authorities in resolving the issue and getting systems back online. As flight operations stabilise, delays and terminal-side congestion may continue for some time, and we thank you for bearing with us during this transition back to normalcy,” it said.
“Airport operator and ATC teams are working on priority to fully restore systems and stabilise operations. The situation is expected to be normalised over the next few hours. During this period, some departure and arrival timings may continue to be adjusted,” IndiGo said in another post.
Passengers were severely impacted after IGI Airport witnessed over 500 flight delays on Thursday night. By Friday, nearly 800 flights were delayed. Average departure delays hovered between 45 minutes to an hour, while arrivals were also delayed due to limited parking bays and airspace congestion. Thousands of passengers were stranded, with many waiting for hours as departure boards showed repeated delays. Some passengers reported on social media that they were held on board the aircraft for a long time before take-off.
According to NDTV, the issue was first noticed on Thursday evening, when ATC officers reported missing flight plan data on their terminals. Within minutes, controllers realised that the AMSS had failed, halting automatic message flow. Since the controllers were not receiving flight plans automatically on their screens, airlines had been preparing them manually. The system soon stopped sending data to the auto track system.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI), however, stated that while technical issues are rare, the safety of flights was “never compromised.” “There was no impact on aircraft already in the air. The disruption was purely related to the pre-departure message flow and flight plan processing,” it said.