SITA launches investigation after computer glitch hits airports

Technology company SITA  has launched an investigation into computer problems that caused widespread delays at Australian and New Zealand airports Monday morning.

Airline staff were forced to resort to manual check-in procedures for international flights after problems with SITA’s Advanced Passenger Processing System used by airlines to check that people can travel to their proposed destination.

The failure of the system caused delays and queues at affected airports and delays in international departures of up to 60 minutes.

SITA said the problem was due to a network connectivity issue which say border control systems disrupted for just under three hours.

“We are treating this incident with the utmost urgency and our Major Incident Management Process has been triggered,’’ it said. “All services now have been fully restored and operations are running as normal.

“We regret any impact this incident has had on our customers and passengers.  Our priority remains, as always, to ensure a stable system so that our customers can conduct their business efficiently and effectively.’’

The company said it was conducting a full investigation to discover the root cause of the outage and its team remained on “high alert”.