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NEW DELHI: Delhi airport’s aging air traffic control (ATC) software crashed Friday after a glitch the previous evening remained unresolved, delaying 800-odd departures and arrivals at India’s busiest civil aviation facility by up to two hours. The ripple effect forced carriers to cancel around 100 flights across routes through the day. Airports Authority of India, accused of going slow on the software upgrade necessary for operations at the scale of Delhi airport, said late Friday that the Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS) system was back to being fully functional. “Due to some backlogs, there may be some delays in the normal functioning of automated operations, but the situation will be normal soon,” it said. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation ordered a probe into the AMSS glitch. Officials ruled out the possibility of a cyber attack triggering the chaos. Several airlines warned that some of their flights scheduled for the weekend could feel the after-effect of Friday’s mayhem.
Flights & security nods managed manually; delays affect arrivals too
With aircraft unable to land on time in Delhi, operations were affected in many other airports, including Mumbai. AMSS is used by airlines to file flight plans 24 hours in advance for arrivals and departures from Delhi as well as for aircraft overflying Delhi airspace. With the automated system going on the blink, all flight plan information had to be fed manually into the database. A new Air Traffic Services Message Handling System (ATSMHS) is being installed. Delhi airport currently handles about 1,550 flights daily and hundreds of aircraft overfly Delhi airspace. Manual processing of data, which isn’t immune to errors, takes four times longer. For the better part of Friday, tracking site Flightradar24 showed Delhi as the most disrupted airport in terms of delayed flights. AAI wrote on X Friday night that the AMSS issue was detected on Thursday. “Immediately, a review meeting was conducted and necessary directions were given to address the issues. The original equipment manufacturer was engaged and additional staff deployed to manually process flight plans for ATC system to ensure uninterrupted and safe air traffic operations…We regret the inconvenience caused to airlines and passengers,” it said. Amid the chaos, IndiGo advised passengers travelling to and from Delhi to check “the latest flight status and arrive a little earlier than usual to allow additional time at the airport”. Air India warned of “delays and longer wait times at the airport and onboard aircraft”. Representatives of multiple airlines said the Delhi AMSS system had a history of glitches. “We have been hearing about the new AHMS system, but it is taking too long to install. In India, we need to file flight plans with different flight information regions (FIRs) – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai – according to the region where a flight is operating. There should be a central flight plan submission FIR. Also, the new software should have been installed five years ago,” an official said.
