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Also Read | ATC system glitch at Delhi fastened; snag had delayed over 500 flights
What was the problem in Delhi?
The Air Traffic Controllers’ Guild (India) raised its considerations, highlighting how the disruption compelled Air Traffic Controllers (ATCOs) to manually deal with over 2,500 every day plane actions, together with greater than 1,500 scheduled flights and 1,000 plane overflying Indian airspace. An aviation supply who’s carefully related to Air Traffic Control (ATC) instructed The Hindu that the automation programs utilized by ATCOs derive the info from the Flight Data Processing System (FDPS), which in flip is fed by the AMSS. When the AMSS skilled failure, the automation programs didn’t get the required information, together with flight plans. Yogendra Gautam, CCM, Air Traffic Safety Electronics Personnel Association (ATSEPA) India, has instructed The Hindu that the AMSS is a core communication spine for air visitors operations, utilized in all the main ATC centres together with Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, to deal with aeronautical messages. These embody flight plans, departure and arrival messages, delay and cancellation messages, meteorological and NOTAM updates and coordination messages between ATCs and airways. Essentially, it receives, shops and forwards these messages mechanically by way of the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network and Aeronautical Message Handling System (AMHS) hyperlinks.
It works utilizing enter sources, from airways, ATC centres, meteorological places of work, and AAI stations, which ship digital flight or operational messages. The AMSS additionally converts numerous codecs right into a unified format. There is a routing logic, the place the system decides the place every message should go, whether or not to the ATC tower or different airports. Messages are quickly saved in a central database and may be retrieved in case of transmission delays. The official mentioned that the AMSS runs 24X7, processing hundreds of flight-related messages.
Technical and procedural points can set off AMSS failure. Delhi’s AMSS, which was provided by a Spanish organisation, is constructed on an older server structure with legacy message-switching software program — there have been patches and upgrades. The system has some India-made content material. Database or server overload, particularly throughout peak hours, may cause delays or lack of communication. Other causes embody insufficient synchronisation between standby programs resulting in message blackout intervals, and integration points with different programs. As the AMSS interfaces with air visitors service automation, aeronautical data service and community routers, any community fault or delayed interface response can choke the AMSS message movement. The official mentioned there may be additionally restricted native technical manpower educated on this legacy system. In Delhi, the glitch was reportedly because of a synchronisation failure between the first and standby servers, compounded by delayed switch-over and corrupted message queues. The end result was an incapability to transmit/obtain flight plans and NOTAMs, he mentioned, including {that a} migration to a contemporary, cloud-supported AMHS/ATS built-in system is lengthy overdue.
Also Read | Delhi IGI airport ATC glitch has ripple impact, 21 flights delayed at Hyderabad airport
How busy is Delhi airport?
In 2024, below the ‘complete passengers’ class, IGI Airport was ranked ninth among the many world’s busiest airports, dealing with 77.8 million passengers, in accordance with the Airports Council International (ACI) World record. It was ranked 15, for its 4,77,509 plane actions. The ACI represents over 2,181 airports throughout 170 nations. Due to the glitch, over 500 flights have been affected and several other cancelled.
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What has the parliamentary report mentioned?
In its ‘Three Hundred Eightieth Report – Overall Review of Safety within the Civil Aviation Sector’ (introduced to the Rajya Sabha on August 20, 2025), the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture noticed that “present automation programs used for air visitors management, significantly at high-density airports akin to Delhi and Mumbai, have begun to exhibit important efficiency degradation. This consists of problems with system slowness, information processing lags, and an absence of recent decision-support options”. It provides: “The present Indian ATC programs lack lots of the superior, built-in capabilities that are actually commonplace in fashionable air visitors administration programs utilized by international counterparts like Eurocontrol or the FAA. These lacking options embody subtle, AI-enabled battle detection and alerting instruments, predictive analytics for visitors movement administration, and seamless, real-time information sharing capabilities between totally different management items and with plane.” This deficit, it mentioned, locations an unlimited further cognitive pressure on already-overworked ATCOs, who’re compelled to manually compensate for the system’s shortcomings. This “will increase the chance of human error and limits the general capability of the airspace”.
Also Read | Flight operations at Delhi airport returns to regular, says DIAL
How is it in Europe as an example?
Professor Marina Efthymiou, Professor of Aviation Management, Business School, Dublin City University, Ireland, has instructed The Hindu that Europe’s Air Traffic Management (ATM) system, coordinated by way of Eurocontrol and applied by way of nationwide air navigation service suppliers, operates on a fancy community of legacy and modernised programs that should seamlessly combine below the Single European Sky framework. While initiatives akin to SESAR (the technological pillar of the Single European Sky) intention to digitalise and harmonise ATM throughout Europe, the coexistence of outdated radar programs, fragmented communication protocols, and inconsistent data-sharing platforms continues to reveal vulnerabilities to technical glitches and cyber threats. There have been disruptions, akin to system outages in flight information processing or communication networks, highlighting the fragility of Europe’s present ATM infrastructure and the necessity for resilient, cloud-based and AI-driven coordination instruments to make sure continuity. And a rising scarcity of certified ATCOs compounds these technical dangers.
The way forward for air navigation in Europe is more likely to depend on satellite-based navigation (GNSS) and automation-enhanced visitors prediction, however these advances would require strong cybersecurity frameworks and redundancy programs to mitigate the chance of information corruption or sign interference, she mentioned.
Also Read | A dozen flights to and from KIA delayed because of ATC glitch in Delhi airport
Are there plans to improve?
In February 2025, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Murlidhar Mohol, listed a collection of initiatives being undertaken by the AAI in air visitors and air navigation administration. These embody the set up of a brand new pan-India AMHS to switch the present AMHS and AMSS programs and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast floor stations at 21 airports which utilise GPS and satellites for figuring out plane positions. Their set up at 15 different areas has been accomplished.
In an in depth notice (up to date August 29, 2025), the AAI has mentioned that it has drawn up plans to improve the ATM infrastructure when it comes to automation programs and expertise upgrades, which additionally contain shifting from ground-based to satellite-based navigation.
