IRCTC Outage Sparks Frustration Among Users During Peak Tatkal Hours

New Delhi: The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) application and website were down on Thursday, leaving several netizens frustrated. The e-ticketing platform experienced a significant outage due to maintenance, preventing people from booking or managing tickets during peak Tatkal hours.

While the app is functioning properly now, the outage caused considerable frustration for many users.

Downdetector, a service that tracks online outages, reported a surge in outage complaints, with over 2,500 users affected. While most complaints focused on the website, 28% of the reports were about the mobile app.

Internet Flooded with Complaints

“India reached the moon, but the Indian Railways ticket booking app can't handle Tatkal booking without crashing. It's 2024, and a stable server shouldn't be rocket science!” one user angrily wrote.

"It is 10:11 AM... still IRCTC is not opening. IRCTC should be investigated... definitely something is wrong. By the time it opens, all the tickets are gone," another user added on X (formerly Twitter).

“India is the largest IT hub in the world, yet it cannot fix a website. You can collect taxes but fail to provide proper services in return. What a shame!” a third user fumed.

“IRCTC portal is down and showing a downtime message during peak Tatkal booking hours,” another user expressed.

Netizens also shared screenshots of the message they received while trying to access IRCTC: “Unable to perform action due to maintenance activity.” 

The platform provided helpline numbers for assistance.

"It urges customers to call customer care at 14646, 08044647999, or 08035734999 or email etickets@irctc.co.in for resolution," the message read.

The outage was experienced across India, including New Delhi, Kolkata, Surat, Mumbai, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chennai, and Bengaluru.

This is the second instance of an IRCTC outage in December. Earlier, the e-ticketing platform underwent a one-hour maintenance on December 9.

IRCTC is yet to issue an official statement regarding the cause of the outage.