The official ticket booking website of Indian Railways, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), crashed for the second time within a week on Saturday, October 25. On the first day of the first day of Chhath festival, users were once again unable to book tickets through the website and mobile app.
Many users reported receiving the message, “This site is currently unreachable, please try after some time,” when attempting to access the IRCTC portal.
Earlier, just before Diwali, users had faced similar problems while booking tickets. After a few hours, the IRCTC server was restored, and ticket booking resumed. However, no official statement has been issued by IRCTC so far regarding the latest outage. The issue has caused inconvenience to thousands of passengers during the festive season.
Several users took to the social media platform X to report problems with the website and shared screenshots showing booking errors. Some also flagged the issue on Downdetector, a platform that tracks website and app outages.
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According to Downdetector, the problem began around 10:00 am, coinciding with the Tatkal ticket booking window for AC classes. Many received “server unavailable” errors while making online reservations. As per Downdetector data, 52% users reported issue with IRCTC application, while 44% reported unable to load website during train booking and 4% users are facing website breakdown problem.
This is not the first time users have faced such issues. On October 17, the IRCTC website also went down, drawing widespread criticism from passengers on social media. Despite claims by the Railway Ministry about ongoing server upgrades, users continue to face disruptions—especially during festive and holiday seasons.