Delhi Airport Flight System Restored After Glitch Delays Hundreds of Flights; Airline Shares Hit

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) announced late Friday that the critical system used to generate flight plans the IP-based Automatic Message Switching System (AMSS) is "up and running" following a technical glitch that caused significant disruption at Delhi airport, one of the world's busiest.

The malfunction, which began around 6 p.m. the previous day (Thursday), resulted in delays of hundreds of flights. At least 200 flights were delayed on Friday alone at Delhi airport, which typically handles 60-70 aircraft movements per hour. Flightradar24 data showed average departure delays hitting 60 minutes on Friday evening. International flights, including one from ITA Airways to Rome and a Virgin Atlantic flight to London, were also affected.

The AMSS failure forced air traffic controllers to manually develop flight plans, a process that slowed operations considerably. Some carriers, like Air India Express, had to depute their own personnel to Air Traffic Control to assist with the manual processing.

Shortly after the AAI's announcement, IndiGo, which holds a 60% share of India's domestic market, confirmed that its operations in Delhi and northern India were gradually returning to normal.

The AAI cautioned that it would take some time for the system to resume functioning completely normally due to the huge backlog of flights. Shares of major airlines were negatively impacted on Friday, with IndiGo (INGL.NS) falling 2% and SpiceJet (SPJT.BO) losing 1%.

The incident follows a separate ransomware attack that recently disrupted automated check-in systems at major European airports in September.