IRCTC Website, App Down Ahead of New Year, Third Outage This Month; Users Upset

New Delhi: The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website reportedly went down again on Tuesday, December 31, marking its third outage this month. By 10:12 AM, DownDetector, the website outage tracker, had logged 1,502 reports of the site being unreachable.

The error message on the site stated, "Booking and cancellation for all sites will be unavailable for the next hour. We deeply regret the inconvenience caused."

This latest outage on New Year's Eve occurred at the critical 10 am window when many users were attempting to book Tatkal tickets, which are available only one day before departure.

As a result, several customers turned to social media to express their frustrations.

Customer reactions to the IRCTC website outage included comments like:

"Why can't the engineers or government come up with alternative solutions to the IRCTC Tatkal bottleneck?" asked one user on X (formerly Twitter). "I've always faced problems when booking Tatkal. What's the point of a system if it can't serve its purpose?"

Another user vented, saying, "Please leave this business, you are not capable. Hire talent or fully privatise it."

A third user wrote, "Dear @IRCTCofficial, your tour services have consistently failed to meet expectations. Booking Tatkal tickets has been a frustrating experience for the past 10 years and still continues. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider offering services that fall short of acceptable standards. @RailMinIndia."

Another user frustrated and tweeted, “The IRCTC website is consistently down during Tatkal booking hours. Who’s managing to book tickets while the rest of us are stuck waiting? By the time it’s back, tickets are gone! This is unacceptable. Rail services need real solutions.”

IRCTC Faces Second Outage: E-Ticketing Disrupted During Peak Holiday Season

On Thursday, December 26, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the tourism and hospitality arm of Indian Railways, experienced its second major outage affecting its website and app services, including e-ticketing. The disruption was attributed to scheduled maintenance, which led to significant inconvenience for thousands of users, especially those attempting to book Tatkal tickets during the holiday season.

The IRCTC website displayed a message stating, “DUE TO MAINTENANCE ACTIVITY, E-TICKETING SERVICE WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE. PLEASE TRY LATER. FOR CANCELLATION/FILE TDR, PLEASE CALL AT CUSTOMER CARE NO. 14646, 08044647999 & 08035734999 OR EMAIL ETICKETS@IRCTC.CO.IN.”

This outage marked the second occurrence in December, causing disruptions in ticket bookings and frustrating numerous passengers, many of whom shared screenshots of the error message on social media.