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.”
