India e-Arrival Card Website Not Working Before My Flight

I flew from Dubai to Bengaluru a few weeks ago and experienced several "Service Unavailable" messages during the evening.

Later I learned that many travelers were reporting similar issues at the same time, so it seemed more like a temporary server problem than an individual account issue. I waited until early morning (India time), and the website loaded much faster.

If the website still doesn't work, you could also check whether the official Su-Swagatam app is working, since some travelers have reported success using it when the website was experiencing issues. It's also a good idea to keep screenshots of any error messages in case you need to explain the situation to your airline or immigration officials. Requirements and procedures can change, so I'd still verify the latest guidance before traveling. 

My issue turned out to be different.

I was traveling from Sydney and the website looked broken, but the actual problem was one of the uploaded files. My passport image exceeded the size limit even though there wasn't any clear error message.

After compressing both my passport scan and photograph, I started a fresh application in Chrome and it finally submitted successfully.

You may want to double-check:

• Passport image size
• Photograph dimensions
• File format requirements
• Internet connection
• Browser cache

The portal isn't very good at explaining what's causing the error, so sometimes it looks like the whole website has stopped working when it's actually rejecting part of the application.

I had almost the same problem before flying from Toronto to Mumbai in April.

The website kept freezing whenever I reached the final review page. I assumed the portal was down, but later realized it seemed to be struggling because of heavy traffic. I left it alone for a couple of hours and tried again early the next morning. Surprisingly, everything worked normally and I received my confirmation almost immediately.

One thing I'd recommend is taking screenshots or keeping your travel details in a separate document. I had to re-enter everything twice after my session expired.

If you're still within the allowed submission window, I'd continue checking every hour or so instead of assuming something is wrong with your application. Based on my experience, temporary outages do happen.

I recently traveled from Australia and noticed that the website was unavailable for several hours before it started working again.

A few travelers in another discussion mentioned seeing blank pages and "service unavailable" messages during the same period. It seemed more like a temporary portal issue than a problem with individual applications.

One thing that helped me was saving screenshots of each completed section. When the session expired, I could quickly enter the information again without starting from scratch.

If you have already completed most sections, check whether a draft application has been saved in your account. Mine was still there after the website came back online.

My experience was slightly different.

I was traveling from Toronto last month and the website appeared broken, but the issue turned out to be one of my uploaded files. The upload seemed successful, but the system wouldn't move beyond the review page.

I reduced the file size of my passport image and re-uploaded it. After that, the application went through immediately.

You may want to double-check:

• Passport scan size
• Photograph dimensions
• File format requirements
• Browser cache and cookies

In my case, the portal never displayed a clear error message, which made troubleshooting difficult.