Technical Glitch in ATC System Causes Flight Delays at Delhi Airport, Says Aviation Expert

By A Staff Reporter

Delhi | A technical issue in the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport led to multiple flight delays on Thursday, disrupting air operations for several hours. Aviation expert Captain Sharath Panicker explained that the malfunction affected automated processes essential for flight management and weather updates.

“The failure of the system basically means that the flight plans, which each aircraft has to submit prior to operating, instead of being interpreted by the computer automatically, have to be manually fed into the system, which leads to the delay,” Captain Panicker said.

He added that meteorological information, usually integrated automatically from various stations across the country through the Automatic Terminal Information System (ATIS), also had to be entered manually due to the glitch. “Once the aircraft is in the air, there is not much delay expected, but the process of getting it into the air would take longer,” he noted.

According to Panicker, the technical support teams are already working to restore normal operations. “The processing and support for resolving the technical glitches are already underway, and hopefully, somewhere down the line today, this will be resolved,” he said.