Airport chaos as Australia-wide outage sparks major travel delays

Airport chaos as Australia-wide outage sparks major travel delays
Source: Daily Mail Online

Hundreds of travellers are facing major delays due to an Australia-wide passport system outage.

Disruptions sparked chaos at Melbourne and Sydney international airports on Sunday as passengers were forced to wait in long queues at the departure terminals.

A Melbourne Airport spokesperson said the Australian Border Force has advised it was experiencing a nationwide system issue affecting all passengers.

'[The] ABF is processing passengers manually,' the spokesperson said.
'We are currently prioritising flights to manage passenger flows.
'We appreciate passengers' patience as ABF works to resolve this issue.'

The ABF have since reported that the system issue has been fixed.

However, the glitch has sparked extended wait times for both inbound and outbound travellers as airport staff work to process passengers.

The technology failure comes just hours after thousands of passengers were left stranded as Jetstar cancelled 90 flights on Saturday due to an urgent upgrades warning.

Airbus announced on Friday that they had discovered a potential vulnerability in the software on board the Airbus A320 during solar storms, which may hinder pilots from steering or stabilising the plane while in the air.

Airbus issued an Alert Operators Transmission (AOT), a global warning urging all airlines that use the A320 passenger jet to immediately update their software and hardware to better protect against radiation interference.

'Airbus has consequently identified a significant number of A320 Family aircraft currently in-service which may be impacted,' it said in a statement on Friday.

Jetstar has since announced the upgrades on its 34 impacted planes have been completed and 'minimal disruptions' are expected on Sunday.

Flight data at Sydney Airport showed six cancelled Jetstar flights on Sunday morning.

A further two flights were also cancelled from Brisbane.

The incident affected about 6,000 planes from around the globe, with most of the affected flights on Saturday departing from Australia's east coast.

'Safety is our number one priority. To respond to a precautionary action from Airbus, we have cancelled some Jetstar Airways flights,' the airline said in a statement on Saturday.
'Our teams are working on options to get customers on their way as quickly as possible and are contacting affected customers directly.'

Huge queues were seen forming at Melbourne Airport before 8am on Saturday as the flights were axed.

The cancellations did not impact Qantas or Virgin Australia flights.