The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) app and website faced another outage earlier this morning on December 31. This is the third time in December when the IRCTC app and website have suffered an outage.
Incidentally, all three times the outage seems have begun around 9.50 am, which is 10 minutes before tatkal ticket bookings open.
Users were greeted with this message when they logged into the IRCTC website: “Booking and Cancellation for All site will not be available for next hour. Inconvenience caused is deeply regretted. FOR CANCELLATION/FILE TDR, PLEASE CALL AT CUSTOMER CARE NO. 14646,08044647999 & 08035734999 OR MAIL AT etickets@irctc.co.in.”
The outage has caused widespread disruption for passengers attempting to book train tickets. Users took to social media to complain about the outage.
According to Downdetector, around 47% of users were unable to access the website, while 42% faced issues with the app, and 10% could not complete ticket bookings.
Further numbers from Downdetector revealed that the outage, which began around 10 am, resulted in login problems, difficulties in searching schedules and fares, and transaction errors.
Till around 9.48 am, there were no reports of any outages. IRCTC’s message on the site does indicate that the site should be back in an hour but it could lead to users missing out on booking tatkal tickets during the short window available.