Air Traffic Control was unable to obtain details of flights appearing on its radar, giving it a scare
A software glitch in the air traffic control system at the IGI airport in New Delhi 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, which persisted for nearly four hours, was finally fixed at around 9 PM, sources said.
Due to the glitch, the Delhi ATC was unable to obtain details of flights appearing on its radar, giving it a scare, they said.
"The problem started at around 5 PM. We did not want the system to collapse, therefore, we had to increase the average time between the take-off and landings," the sources said.
At around 9 PM, airport authorities requested other airport operators to delay departures of all Delhi-bound flights from their airports to help it regulate the traffic, they said, adding after which the situation was slowly brought under control.
This led to delay in arrival and departure of several flights, causing inconvenience to the passengers.