Thousands of travellers were left frustrated on Friday as the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website crashed, hampering bookings for trains ahead of the Diwali and Chhath Puja holidays.
Users attempting to book tickets were met with the message, “The server is temporarily unable to serve requests. Error code 109,” or “Downtime Message: Booking and cancellation services are unavailable on this site for the next hour. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Reports indicate that the site stopped functioning as soon as Tatkal ticket bookings opened.
Social media users took shared screenshots of error messages and lighthearted memes about the website outage.
A post showing an image of Hollywood director Martin Scorsese read “absolute crash,” with the caption, “IRCTC website/app crashed from too many bookings and users.”
A post on X read, “How does the IRCTC site become down and everyone knows diwali and holiday time going on and people have plans to travel (sic).”
Someone wrote sarcastically, “Thank you IRCTC,” sharing an image of the broken server.
“IRCTC server goes down as soon as the Tatkal ticket booking time starts,” another post read.
Other memes:
Downdetector reported a sharp rise in complaints about IRCTC on Friday morning, peaking around 10 am. The website said the outage was due to a large number of users trying to book tickets at the same time.
For help with cancellations or Ticket Deposit Receipt (TDR) filings, users can call 14646, 08044647999, 08035734999, or email etickets@irctc.co.in.
This isn’t the first time IRCTC has crashed. In December 2024, the site went down three times during busy booking periods.
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