10,000 passengers stranded as computer glitch grounds flights in Japan
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Thousands of passengers were left stranded at airports across Japan on Tuesday, after ANA’s check-in systems failed.
The Kyodo news agency reports that the airline’s computer systems crashed at 50 Japanese airports this morning, causing the cancellation of dozens of domestic flights.
ANA said in a statement that its “check-in, reservation and sales system for domestic flights… experienced a system malfunction as of 08:20am” on 22 March. “We regret that unavoidably delays and cancellations may result from these system issues,” it added. The glitch was eventually resolved at around 11.30am.
In total, ANA was forced to cancel 87 domestic flights on Tuesday morning, affecting more than 10,000 travellers. Customers were also unable to make online reservations.
Kyodo also reports that four other Japanese carriers – Starflyer, Airdo, Solaseed Air and Ibex Airlines – were impacted by the failure as they share the same online system.
And the delay could not have come at a much worse time for ANA; Tuesday morning followed a three-day holiday weekend in Japan, meaning that airports were handling more passengers than usual.
ANA is Japan’s largest airline in terms of fleet size and passenger traffic, and operates 117 domestic routes.
Airport delays a rare in Japan; according to OAG’s Punctuality League for 2015, ANA and its rival JAL achieved the best on-time performance of any Asian airlines last year, and both ranked in the global top five.
Osaka’s Itami Airport recorded the world’s highest punctuality rate last year, with 93.85% of its flights arriving and departing within 15 minutes of their scheduled time, and Tokyo Haneda Airport was the top-ranked large airport, with 91.25% of its flights on time.
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