A major technical failure at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport disrupted operations and delayed more than 800 flights on Friday. The glitch began late Thursday after the Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS) — a vital Air Traffic Control network — stopped working. This system feeds flight data into the Auto Track System (ATS), which creates flight plans.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) confirmed that engineers restored the AMSS by Friday evening. Operations gradually returned to normal, though minor delays continued. AAI teams, along with experts from ECIL and the system’s manufacturer, worked nonstop to fix the issue.
The outage forced controllers to prepare flight plans manually, slowing departures and causing long queues across terminals. Average delays reached nearly 50 minutes by Friday morning, affecting other major airports including Mumbai, Jaipur, and Chandigarh.
Airlines such as IndiGo, SpiceJet, and Air India warned passengers about possible delays and urged them to check updated schedules. Aviation expert Captain Sharath Panicker said the failure also affected weather updates, which had to be entered manually.
By night, AAI confirmed that automated flight processing had resumed, and flights were steadily returning to schedule.
