New Delhi, Nov 8 (IANS) Delhi airport operator DIAL said on Saturday that flight operations at the country’s busiest airport are back to normal since afternoon, after the major malfunction of the air traffic control system that happened on Friday, delaying over 800 flights and stranding passengers.

“All flight operations are normal at Delhi airport,” DIAL wrote in a passenger advisory on X.

However, DIAL asked passengers to stay in touch with their airlines for the latest flight updates.

Earlier in the morning, DIAL had said that the technical issue which affected the AMSS was gradually improving. “Airline operations at Delhi Airport are returning to normal, and all concerned authorities are working diligently to minimise any inconvenience caused,” it said on X.

Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), which has four runways, handles more than 1,500 flight movements daily.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) said it has addressed the “technical issue in the AMSS, which caused delays in processing flight plan messages”.

“The OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) was engaged, and additional staff were deployed to manually process Flight Plans for the Air Traffic Control system to ensure uninterrupted and safe air traffic operations immediately.

According to a flight tracking website, Flightradar 24, 129 flights (53 arrivals and 76 departures) were delayed on Saturday morning as compared with the nearly 800 delays on Friday.

The Delhi airport, in its statement this morning, said, “The technical issue which affected the Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS), that supports the Air Traffic Control flight planning process, is gradually improving. Airline operations at Delhi Airport are returning to normal, and all concerned authorities are working diligently to minimise any inconvenience caused. Passengers are advised to stay in touch with their airlines for latest flight update.”

IndiGo Airlines, which was among the other major airlines affected by the outage, also issued an advisory saying the flight operations are “progressively” being restored at the Delhi Airport.

“We are pleased to share that the temporary AMSS system outage affecting Air Traffic Control has now been resolved, and normal operations are being progressively restored at Delhi Airport and other impacted airports in the northern region. We appreciate the efforts of the airport and ATC authorities in resolving the issue and getting systems back online. As flight operations stabilise, delays and terminal-side congestion may continue for some time, and we thank you for bearing with us during this transition back to normalcy,” the airline’s statement added.

The airline, in an earlier post, added, “Airport operator and ATC teams are working on priority to fully restore systems and stabilise operations. The situation is expected to be normalised over the next few hours. During this period, some departure and arrival timings may continue to be adjusted.”

–IANS

sps/na