SITE TO BE ACTIVE AFTER SERVICING
V Ayyappan | TNN
Oct 24, 2008
Chennai: Holidayers trying to book railway tickets online are having a hard time as the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website is not able to handle the growing number of transactions during peak hours.
IRCTC was forced to suspend online reservations on Thursday to iron out the problems faced by customers. The shutdown of online booking during the festival rush has affected the booking of tatkal tickets.
Several hundreds of passengers who tried to book tatkal tickets online this week were unable to do it as the website slowed down immediately after bookings opened at 8 am.
The website fails to process the booking requests, distressing passengers because tickets
run out fast, especially during the festival season. “By the time we rush to counters, all tickets would be sold out. Many try to book online to get tickets faster without wasting time in queues,” said Mahendra Kumar, a resident of Vepery.
According to Southern Railway, more than 50% of the reservations happen online everyday. This is one of the reasons for tickets getting sold out as soon as reservations open for special trains. The number of online reservations is expected to go up as a travel portal, too has recently introduced railway reservations, said a railway official.
An IRCTC official said, “the site is under maintenance to resolve the problems faced by customers. The transactions fail during peak hours because of a communication snag that delays response from banks. This is being set right.”
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