One of world's oldest sites, IRCTC train ticketing platform crashes
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The site that handles over 800,000 bookings daily crashed during peak Tatkal booking hours, Friday morning, leaving millions of passengers stranded ahead of Diwali and Chhath Puja holidays. Partial services were confirmed in the evening. The down time triggered a domino effect across India’s transportation network, prices and demand shooting up. (Note: Technically, we need to fortify systems by stress test, sooner the better. Because challenges ahead are turning more formidable.)
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NEW DELHI, Oct 17: India's train ticket booking website, one of world's largest,
oldest and most efficient enterprises, the IRCTC crashed on Friday morning,
practically stopping millions of people from going home during the Diwali and
Chhath Puja festival holidays.
The website and app were both affected, causing significant disruption for
users trying to book train tickets. It was confirmed that the service was restored
later in the day.
The site crashed during peak Tatkal booking hours, leaving millions of Indians
stranded ahead of Diwali and Chhath Puja. The outage disrupted one of the world’s
largest digital ticketing systems at a time of peak national travel.
The website and mobile app went offline early Friday morning, just as Tatkal
ticket bookings opened for the festive rush. The timing couldn’t have been worse:
with Diwali and Chhath Puja approaching, millions of passengers were trying
to secure last-minute train tickets to return home. Instead, they were met with
error messages, frozen screens, and booking failures.
The IRCTC, often hailed as one of the world’s largest and most efficient online
ticketing platforms, handles over 800,000 bookings daily. During festival seasons,
this number can surge dramatically.
On October 17, however, the system buckled under the pressure. According to
Downdetector, complaints spiked around 10 am IST, with thousands of users reporting
issues within the first hour.
Passengers attempting to book tickets were greeted with messages like “The
server is temporarily unable to serve requests. Error code 109,” and “Booking
and cancellation services are unavailable on this site for the next hour. Sorry
for the inconvenience”. The entire digital booking ecosystem was rendered inaccessible.
Social media platforms lit up with frustration, memes, and disbelief. Users
posted screenshots of the errors and vented their anger at the timing of the
crash. One viral post featured a meme of director Martin Scorsese captioned
“Absolute Crash,” mocking the scale of the outage. Another user wrote, “How
does the IRCTC site become down and everyone knows Diwali and holiday time going
on and people have plans to travel?”
The outage not only disrupted travel plans but also triggered a domino effect
across India’s transportation network. With train bookings stalled, passengers
scrambled for alternatives—buses, flights, and taxis—causing a surge in demand
and prices.
Many families and migrant workers, especially in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and
West Bengal, where Chhath Puja is deeply celebrated, were left in limbo.
IRCTC officials acknowledged the issue, attributing it to “technical disruptions
due to an overwhelming number of service requests.” They assured users that
restoration efforts were underway and that engineers were working to stabilize
the system. However, no specific timeline for full recovery was provided.
A similar crash occurred in December 2024 during winter holiday bookings. Yet,
the scale and timing of Friday’s outage have reignited concerns about the robustness
of India’s digital public infrastructure during peak demand.
As of Friday evening, partial services had resumed, but many users continued
to report intermittent failures. With Diwali just days away, the pressure is
mounting on IRCTC to restore full functionality.—Agencies
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