The Indian airports authority announced late on Friday that a system used to generate flight plans was “up and running,” more than a day after a technical glitch led to delays of hundreds of flights at Delhi airport, one of the world’s busiest.
The malfunction, which had delayed departures and arrivals, caused shares of IndiGo to drop by 2 per cent on Friday, while SpiceJet lost 1% after the airlines, along with Air India Group, warned of disruptions expected to continue into Saturday.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) stated that it will take some time for the system to resume normal operations, given the significant backlog. At least 200 flights were delayed on Friday after the system began malfunctioning around 6 p.m. the previous day, according to a source familiar with the situation.
“The issue was detected… in the IP-based Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS),” AAI mentioned in a post on X, without providing details on the cause of the technical issue. The malfunction in the AMSS, used to generate flight plans, forced controllers to create them manually, leading to delays, as stated by the AAI earlier on Friday.
Some airlines, such as Air India Express, assigned their own personnel to air traffic control to generate flight plans manually, a second source familiar with the matter reported. This incident follows a ransomware attack that disrupted some of Europe’s biggest airports, affecting automated check-in systems and flights in September.
The glitch in India delayed about 25 flight departures on Thursday and more than 175 on Friday at Delhi airport, according to the first source. Delhi airport manages 60-70 aircraft movements per hour. Data from Flightradar24 indicated the average departure delay was 60 minutes on Friday evening.
The malfunction also affected several international airlines, with an ITA Airways flight to Rome delayed by nearly two hours and a Virgin Atlantic flight to London by more than an hour.
Delhi airport accommodated about 78 million passengers in 2024, making it the ninth busiest airport globally, as per Airports Council International. The airport is predominantly owned by GMR Airports, while air traffic control is managed by the AAI.
