Delhi Airport Flights Stabilise After Major ATC Glitch

Flight operations at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport — one of the busiest in India — are gradually returning to normal, nearly 36 hours after a major technical glitch disrupted its Air Traffic Control (ATC) system.

According to flight tracking website Flightradar24, around 129 flights (53 arrivals and 76 departures) have been delayed on Saturday — a significant improvement compared to the nearly 800 delays recorded on Friday. The average delay currently stands at five minutes for arrivals and 19 minutes for departures.

In a statement, Delhi Airport authorities confirmed that the issue affecting the Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS) — which supports the ATC flight planning process — is now stabilising.

“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 the latest flight updates,” the airport said in a statement this morning.

Airlines Begin Recovery Efforts

IndiGo Airlines, one of the carriers most affected by the outage, said flight operations are “progressively being restored.”

“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. As flight operations stabilise, delays and terminal-side congestion may continue for some time,” IndiGo said in a statement.

The airline added that the situation is expected to normalise within the next few hours and urged passengers to check for real-time updates before travelling.

Chaos and Passenger Frustration

The technical failure triggered chaos at Delhi Airport starting Thursday evening, when over 500 flights were delayed, followed by nearly 800 delays on Friday.

Average departure delays ranged from 45 minutes to an hour, with several arrivals also impacted due to limited parking bays and airspace congestion.

Thousands of passengers were left stranded inside terminals, with many waiting for hours as departure boards repeatedly displayed delays. Some travellers also reported being held on board aircraft for extended periods before take-off.

AAI Clarifies: Flight Safety Unaffected

Sources revealed that the problem began when ATC officers noticed missing flight plan data on their terminals, which was later traced to a malfunction in the AMSS, which halted automatic message flow. Controllers had to manually process flight plans as the system stopped sending data to the auto track network.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) clarified that while the incident caused significant disruption, flight safety 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,” the AAI said.