Over 100 flights were delayed at Indira Gandhi International Airport on Friday morning due to persistent technical glitches in the air traffic control system, forcing controllers to manually prepare flight plans in a laborious process that has triggered widespread disruptions. The issues, stemming from problems with the Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS) that feeds data into the Auto Track System (AMS), began Thursday evening and continued into the peak travel hours, affecting one of the world's busiest airports that handles over 1,500 daily flight movements.

Air traffic controllers, unable to access automated flight plans, have resorted to compiling them using available data sources—a time-intensive workaround that has led to significant air traffic congestion over the national capital. Authorities from the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) are working round-the-clock to resolve the faults, but no estimated time for full restoration has been announced, leaving thousands of passengers stranded with cascading delays.

Real-time data from flight tracking platform Flightradar24 indicated an average departure delay of around 50 minutes as of Friday midday, with ripple effects impacting arrivals and departures across domestic carriers like IndiGo, Air India, and Vistara, as well as international operators. Sources confirmed the manual interventions, while ensuring safety protocols remain intact, have severely bottlenecked operations during the ongoing winter fog season when visibility challenges already strain the system.

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The snag comes at a particularly inconvenient time, with Delhi airport witnessing heightened passenger traffic ahead of the festive and wedding season. Airport officials have advised travelers to check flight statuses via airline apps or the official website, while helplines report a surge in queries. Similar technical hiccups in the past have drawn scrutiny over infrastructure resilience at India's gateway hub.

As engineers race to restore automated systems, the incident underscores the vulnerabilities in critical aviation technology amid growing air traffic. With no injuries reported and safety uncompromised, operations are expected to normalize gradually, though full recovery could extend into the afternoon, potentially affecting hundreds more flights.

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