Central government rules out ‘intrusion’ in Delhi airport ATC system

The civil aviation regulator, DGCA, has conducted a thorough probe into the matter and such interruptions are not expected to happen again, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Jayant Sinha said.

By: PTI

New Delhi | October 6, 2016 07:39 PM IST

2 min read

The government on Thursday ruled out “any kind of intrusion” for the glitches in the air traffic control system at the IGI airport in New Delhi, saying the reason for its malfunctioning has been identified and work is on to resolve it.

The civil aviation regulator, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), has conducted a thorough probe into the matter and such interruptions are not expected to happen again, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Jayant Sinha said.

A software glitch in the air traffic control system at the international airport here on Tuesday evening threw aircraft operations out of the gear, forcing the ATC personnel to increase the average gap between the landing and take-off of the aircraft to five minutes from 2 minutes on a normal day.

The glitch continued for nearly four hours before it was fixed.

“We have studied the matter thoroughly with respect to the interruptions in ATC software systems. We have identified the reason for its malfunctioning and we are addressing it,” he said.

Asked if there were any possibility of cyber attack on the ATC system that led to its malfunctioning, Sinha said, “I can definitely say there was no intrusion of any kind”.

According to Sinha, the DGCA along with the Airports Authority of India (AAI), which is responsible for air traffic operations, conducted a thorough investigation.

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Due to the glitch, the Delhi ATC was unable to obtain details of flights appearing on its radar, giving it a scare.

“We have identified the malfunctioning and addressed it. We don’t expect that to happen again,” he added

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