One technical glitch, hundreds of flight delays: What went wrong at Delhi airport

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) confirmed that technical teams were working to restore the AMSS.

Flight operations at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) were severely affected on Friday after a technical glitch in the Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS) — a key network supporting Air Traffic Control (ATC) data — caused delays to over 100 flights. The disruption also impacted flight operations at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, which depends on the same system for ATC flight planning, ANI reported.

Delhi Airport said the matter was being addressed on priority “with close coordination among ATC, DIAL, and other stakeholders.” In a post on X, it added, “We regret the disruption being experienced at IGIA due to a technical issue at ATC that is affecting flight operations… Passengers are requested to follow updates from their airlines regarding revised schedules.”

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) confirmed that technical teams were working to restore the AMSS. “Controllers are processing flight plans manually, leading to some delays. Technical teams are working to restore the system at the earliest,” AAI posted on X.

Following the disruption, Mumbai Airport also issued a passenger advisory saying, “Flight operations at Mumbai Airport are being affected by a technical issue impacting the Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS) at Delhi, which supports Air Traffic Control flight planning. The concerned authorities are actively working to resolve the issue at the earliest.”

Explaining the impact of the failure, Captain Sharath Panicker told ANI, "The failure of the system basically means that the flight plans, which each aircraft has to submit prior to operating, instead of being interpreted by the computer and automatically, have to be manually fed into the system, which leads to the delay... In addition to that, all the meteorological information that comes from all the meteorological stations across the country is integrated into this one conduit, which is available in the form of the Automatic Terminal Information System or the ATIS. This also would have to be done manually... Once the aircraft is in the air, there is not much delay expected, but the process of getting it into the air would take longer... The processing and support for resolving the technical glitches are already underway, and hopefully, somewhere down the line today, this will be resolved.”

Meanwhile, several airlines, including Air India, IndiGo, and SpiceJet, issued advisories alerting passengers about possible delays due to the ongoing technical issue, according to ANI.

*With Agency Inputs