Delhi Airport Recovery: Flight Operations Gradually Improving After Major ATC System Outage

The average delay for arrivals is five minutes, while departures are experiencing around 19 minutes delay.

New Delhi:

Flight operations at Delhi Airport, one of India's busiest aviation hubs, are "gradually improving" nearly 36 hours following a significant technical malfunction in its Air Traffic Control (ATC) system. According to Flightradar 24, a flight tracking website, Saturday has seen 129 flights delayed (53 arrivals and 76 departures) - a substantial improvement compared to Friday's nearly 800 delays.

Currently, arriving flights face an average delay of five minutes, while departing flights are delayed by approximately 19 minutes.

In a statement released this morning, Delhi airport officials said, "The technical issue affecting the Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS), which 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 minimize any inconvenience caused. Passengers are advised to stay in touch with their airlines for latest flight updates."

IndiGo Airlines, among the major carriers affected by the outage, issued an advisory stating that flight operations are "progressively" being restored at 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 stabilize, delays and terminal-side congestion may continue for some time, and we thank you for bearing with us during this transition back to normalcy," the airline announced.

In a follow-up communication, IndiGo added, "Airport operator and ATC teams are working on priority to fully restore systems and stabilize operations. The situation is expected to be normalized over the next few hours. During this period, some departure and arrival timings may continue to be adjusted."

Chaos at Delhi Airport

Delhi's IGI Airport experienced over 500 flight delays on Thursday night, which escalated to nearly 800 delayed flights by Friday. Average departure delays ranged between 45 minutes to an hour, while arrivals were also affected due to limited parking bays and airspace congestion. Thousands of passengers were stranded, with many waiting for hours as departure boards displayed repeated delays. Some travelers reported on social media that they were kept on board aircraft for extended periods before take-off.

Sources informed NDTV that the issue was first detected Thursday evening when ATC officers noticed missing flight plan data on their terminals. Within minutes, controllers discovered that the AMSS had failed, disrupting automatic message flow. Since controllers weren't receiving flight plans automatically on their screens, airlines had to prepare them manually. The system subsequently stopped transmitting data to the auto track system.

However, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) clarified 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," they stated.