Glitch hits hundreds of flights at Delhi airport: Aviation minister visits ATC to review ops

On Saturday, flight operations were gradually moving towards normalcy, but passengers still faced some delays

Union Civil Aviation Minister Rammohan Naidu on Saturday visited the Air Traffic Control (ATC) Tower at the Delhi airport to review flight operations. (Photo: X@RamMNK)

Union Civil Aviation Minister Rammohan Naidu on Saturday visited the Air Traffic Control (ATC) Tower at the Delhi airport to review flight operations following a technical glitch that disrupted air traffic messaging systems over the past two days. The minister directed officials to conduct a detailed root-cause analysis to prevent a recurrence of such incidents.

The glitch at the country’s busiest airport, which began on the afternoon of November 6 and was fully resolved only by Saturday afternoon, had led to massive disruptions across India. More than 600 flights were delayed and 46 flights cancelled.

On Saturday, flight operations were gradually moving towards normalcy, but passengers still faced some delays. Departing flights were faced with an average delay of more than 30 minutes on Saturday, according to Flightradar24.

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The minister also instructed officials to explore technological upgrades and redundancy mechanisms such as fallback servers to strengthen ATC infrastructure and prevent future disruptions.

Naidu, who was accompanied by Civil Aviation Secretary Samir Kumar Sinha and Airports Authority of India (AAI) Chairman Vipin Kumar, appreciated the efforts of engineers and ATC staff who worked overnight to restore the system.

During the disruption, the ATC messaging system — managed by the Airports Authority of India’s Air Navigation Services (ANS) and supported by the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) — was operated manually to maintain flight safety and minimise inconvenience to passengers.

Following his late-night review at the Delhi ANS Centre on Friday, the Minister had directed ECIL to deploy additional technical manpower and instructed AAI to position more ATC staff for manual operations. The system was restored to full automatic mode by Saturday afternoon, officials said, adding that no flight cancellations occurred today.

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