app_dial
"No one is available to answer at this time" in Asterisk
This is app_dial summarising a Dial() attempt where nothing worked out. It is a conclusion drawn from several attempts, which means the actual reason is always somewhere else in the log.
What it looks like in the log
[2026-08-17 11:37:55] VERBOSE[13390][C-00001877] app_dial.c: No one is available to answer at this time (3:0/0/0)What it means
Asterisk prints this when a Dial() completed with nobody having taken the call. Every destination it tried was unreachable, busy, or never registered - but the line itself does not say which, because it is an aggregate across all of them.
The distinction from "Everyone is busy/congested" is worth holding onto: there, no destination could even ring. Here, the attempt ran its course and simply ended with no answer.
Most common causes
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01The call rang out
The ordinary case. The timeout on Dial() expired before anyone picked up.
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02Destinations that were never reachable
If nothing rang at all, the destinations were unregistered or unreachable and the timeout merely expired on silence.
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03A ring timeout shorter than human reaction time
A Dial() timeout of ten or fifteen seconds gives roughly three rings. Users report missed calls; the log reports this line.
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04A dialplan retry loop
If this fires several times on one call in quick succession, the dialplan is retrying a destination that is still unavailable rather than falling through to something else.
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05Devices ringing silently
A phone with the ringer off or in a headset-only mode is reachable, rings, and is never answered - indistinguishable in the log from a user who ignored it.
How to tell which one it is
Look at the SIP responses and channel events in the seconds before this line. A 180 Ringing from a destination proves that leg worked and the call genuinely rang out. No 180 at all means nothing ever rang, and the timeout was just silence.
Also check how long elapsed between the Dial and this line. That interval is your effective ring time, and comparing it to what you think is configured occasionally produces a surprise.
How to fix it
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Check the ring duration against the timeout
If the elapsed time is shorter than expected, the Dial() timeout is lower than intended, possibly overridden somewhere later than the config you were reading.
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Confirm the destinations were registered
No 180 Ringing means no phone rang. Registration state at the time of the call is the thing to check.
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Add a fallthrough destination
Handle the no-answer case explicitly so the caller reaches voicemail rather than a dead line.
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Break retry loops
If the same Dial repeats within one call, add a condition so a still-unavailable destination is not retried indefinitely.