Travel chaos hits IGI as vital network collapses

The Capital's airport was plunged into chaos on Friday when the backbone of air traffic communications was paralysed, disrupting close to 65% of all flights and leaving thousands of passengers stranded with delays stretching beyond 12 hours until authorities managed to restore systems late in the evening.

- Neha LM Tripathi

The Airports Authority of India said late on Friday it had restored the Automatic Message Switching System around 9pm, ending what experts described an "unprecedented" 30-hour outage that forced air traffic controllers at Indira Gandhi International Airport to manually process flight plans - a time-consuming procedure that created cascading delays across India's aviation network.

In a statement, AAI said the IP-based AMSS system malfunctioned on Thursday, prompting an emergency review meeting led by the civil aviation secretary. Engineers from Electronics Corporation of India Limited worked alongside AAI personnel to restore operations, though officials warned that backlogs would cause lingering delays.