Civil Aviation Minister Rammohan Naidu has ordered a manpower boost and root-cause investigation following a major technical glitch in Delhi Airport’s Air Traffic Control (ATC) system that disrupted flight schedules.
Key Developments
- ATC messaging system failure caused flight delays and cancellations
- Manual operations implemented during system downtime
- Full system restoration achieved by November 8 afternoon
- Minister directs immediate manpower deployment and future prevention measures
Minister’s On-Site Review
Minister Naidu visited the Delhi Air Navigation Services Centre on Saturday to assess the situation following the ATC system malfunction. He was accompanied by senior aviation officials including Secretary Samir Kumar Sinha and AAI Chairman Vipin Kumar.
The minister directed ECIL to deploy additional technical manpower to expedite restoration efforts. He also ordered increased ATC staff deployment at Delhi Airport to support manual operations and minimize passenger inconvenience during the system outage.
Round-the-Clock Restoration Efforts
Teams from Airports Authority of India, Air Navigation Services, and Electronics Corporation of India Limited worked continuously to identify and resolve the technical issue.
ECIL promptly provided additional manpower while ATC staff efficiently managed flight operations manually, ensuring passenger safety throughout the disruption.
“Owing to the coordinated efforts of ECIL engineers, ATC personnel, and the ministry’s proactive monitoring, the system was fully restored to automatic mode by afternoon of November 8 (today). There were no flight cancellations today owing to the issue,” said the ministry in a statement.
Preventing Future Disruptions
Following his visit to the ATC Tower to review normalized operations, Minister Naidu appreciated the teams that worked overnight to resolve the issue.
The minister has directed a detailed root-cause analysis to prevent recurrence of such glitches. He also instructed officials to plan for system advancements, including additional or fallback servers to strengthen operations.
The technical issue in the Automatic Message Switching System at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport had caused major disruptions to flight operations on Friday before being successfully addressed by authorities.
