Delhi’s airport operator said all flight operations had returned to normal, a day after a technical glitch with air traffic control (ATC) delayed hundreds of flights at one of the world’s busiest airports.
A technical problem with the Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS), which helps air traffic control plan flights, persisted for more than 15 hours starting Friday. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) announced around 9:00 pm that the issue had been resolved.
“All flights are normal at Delhi Airport. We wish all our passengers a smooth and pleasant journey! Passengers are advised to stay in touch with their respective airlines for the latest flight updates,” Delhi Airport said on X.
The Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) in the national capital, which has four runways, handles over 1,500 flights every day.
More than 800 flights were delayed and several flights canceled on Friday, affecting hundreds of passengers.
India’s largest airline, IndiGo, said on Saturday morning that the airport operator and ATC teams are working as a priority to fully restore systems and stabilize operations. Flight-tracking website Flightradar24.com showed more than 200 flights, including arrivals and departures, were delayed at the airport on Saturday morning.
It was not immediately clear whether these delays were due solely to the gradually improving AMSS problem.
AMSS started experiencing technical problems late Thursday afternoon, but the outage occurred around 5:45 am on Friday, forcing air traffic controllers to prepare flight plans manually, according to PTI sources.
AAI, which provides navigation and related services, has deployed additional staff to manually process flight plans, a time-consuming process. On Friday evening, AAI said it had “resolved a technical issue in AMSS that caused a delay in processing flight plan messages”.
The problem was originally detected in the IP-based AMSS system on November 6.
AAI said, “The OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) has been engaged and additional staff have been deployed to manually process flight plans for the air traffic control system to immediately ensure uninterrupted and safe flight operations. A team of ECIL officials and AAI personnel is still on site. The AMSS systems are now operational. There may be some delays in normal operations due to some unfinished business, but normal operations will be back soon.”
