Passenger processing system restored after outage at some Australian airports

TIN news:  Passport check-in systems at numerous Australian airports have been restored after an earlier outage resulted in long flight delays and large queues for passengers.

The system outage is reported to have affected international airports at Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, reported media sources.

According to Melbourne Airport Communications head Grant Smith, the outage affected the advanced passenger processing (APP) system in use worldwide.

During check-in, the APP system helps determine if a passenger is authorised to travel to or from a country.

The breakdown resulted in the delay of flights for hours as international passengers at the Australian airports were checked-in manually.

Meanwhile, the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection issued a statement saying that it was 'aware of an external system outage with the Society International Telecommunications Aeronautiques (SITA) system, this will affect travellers entering and departing Australia'.

Confirming that the system outage was not caused by any cyber attack, a SITA spokeswoman was quoted by ABC News as saying: "We experienced a network connectivity issue. This was caused by a major telecom failure in the UK of a top provider to our data centre.

“In response, we implemented an alternative communications link and resumed services. Our team continues to monitor the situation. We can confirm this incident was not due to a cyber attack.”

The department noted that additional Australian Border Force officers were deployed at the airports in order to minimise the impact on passengers.