NEW DELHI, Nov 7: The Airports Authority of India said that its air traffic control messaging system at Delhi airport is “up and functional”, a day after a technical glitch disrupted hundreds of flights. More than 800 flights were delayed at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport on Friday due to a glitch in the Air Traffic Control system.

According to the airport, a technical issue was detected with the Automatic Message Switching System that supports the ATC flight planning process. Air traffic controllers were forced to manually prepare flight plans using available data, a time-consuming process that resulted in flight delays.

Passengers were advised to check for flight updates before heading to the airport, the airport said in a statement.

Flight operations at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport have also been impacted, data from Flightradar 24 showed.

All major airlines, including IndiGo, Air India and SpiceJet, said their services were affected, leading to long queues and slower operations.

Mumbai airport said in a statement that its flight operations were also impacted.

Delhi’s IGI Airport, the busiest in the country, manages more than 1,500 flights each day.

Over 800 flights cancelled in US as flight cuts at 40 airports kick in amid US govt shutdown

NEW YORK, Nov 7: More than 800 flights were cancelled in United States even as the flight cuts announced at 40 airports – including New York, Los Angeles and San Diego – are set to kick in on Friday.

This comes after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a 4 per cent reduction in flights at 40 airports across the US to cut traffic starting Friday, even as operations remain impacted amid the government shutdown.

Following the FAA order, several major airlines preemptively cancelled hundreds of flights scheduled for today, with the mandated cuts expected to increase to 10 per cent next week if the shutdown continues, CNN reported.

The flight cancellations stood at 800 at around 4:30 am ET on Friday, four times the number of cancellations a day earlier, according to data from FlightAware. The cancellations on Thursday stood at 201. Several airlines have assured passengers of a full refund for the tickets of the flights cancelled.

Meanwhile, the FAA has warned that up to 4,000 flights could be affected per day if the shutdown does not end, with the control towers at airports struggling due to absences from air traffic controllers, according to BBC.

The flight cuts were announced by the US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy during a presser on Wednesday. “It's going to lead to more cancellations, but we are going to work with the airlines to do this in a systematic way,” he said.

While public details on the recent measure are very sparse, some aspects about the US government's plan are known, according to a Bloomberg report.

Airlines have reportedly been informed that the flight cuts should usually come between 6 am and 10 pm, according to people familiar with the matter. The people refused to be identified given that these details have not been made public yet, Bloomberg reported.

Apart from this, government officials have told carriers that the flight reductions are likely to start at 4 per cent and then build to 10 per cent some time next week. However, the officials have reportedly said that international flights would be exempted from these cuts.

According to a report from Sheila Kahyaoglu, an analyst with Jefferies, the big four airlines in the US, which have the most flights in the country's largest hubs, will likely be the most impacted during November and December.