Auckland Airport doesn’t know yet what led to passenger chaos, airlines respond with fury

A fibre cable issue has triggered long delays with international flights in and out of the airport this morning. Photo / Supplied

A problem at Auckland Airport has led to check-in chaos that one airline boss has described as a “Third World disgrace”.

Airlines were notified by email by a third party that at 11pm last night a cable directly affecting systems for 14 airlines was out, leading to delays overnight and problems threatening to worsen into today.

Already queues are reported to be out the door of the international terminal.

Airlines were told the Muse (Multi-User System Environment) check-in system was not available. Major carriers directly hit include Qantas, American Airlines, Hawaiian, Delta, and Cathay Pacific.

Air New Zealand is not directly hit.

A message to airlines seen by the Business Herald said it did not know what time the service would be restored. Cabling contractors were working on the problem at the airport which is in the midst of a multi-million dollar infrastructure upgrade.

The airline boss, speaking on condition of anonymity, said currently the baggage system was completely jammed due to the number of tags being pushed into the system and the need for more manual work by airline staff.

He likened it to a Third World disgrace.

Overnight delays stretched for hours.

In a statement, Auckland Airport said no cable cuts had taken place at Auckland Airport overnight by construction teams or contractors on any of its building sites.

”Reports that a cable cut caused the delays experienced by travellers are incorrect. The report has originated from an email sent by an external organisation in the early hours of this morning to airlines operating at Auckland Airport, speculating about the cause of the fault.

”We can confirm this morning’s outage took place outside the Auckland Airport network, and our team continues to work collaboratively with external network providers to establish what caused the fault.”

The airport spokeswoman said at this stage the cause of the fault is still unclear.

”Earlier this morning airlines needed to use manual processes to check in customers, slowing check-in processes, creating congestion and delaying flights. Auckland Airport asks that travellers please continue to keep updated about their flight times by checking their airline’s apps and websites.”

Systems at the airport were now back up and airlines were working to process customers as quickly as possible. Domestic travel is not affected.

Board of Airline Representatives executive director Cath O’Brien told the Herald the latest problem came on top of a range of issues with the baggage system recently.

“Today’s IT outage looks like a new issue, but this is also affecting the baggage system, which is still facing challenges following earlier works,” she said.

“As we head into the busiest period of the year airlines encourage Auckland Airport to continue to do all they can to recover check-in and baggage systems so that travellers can be checked in and begin their journeys without delay.“

Grant Bradley has been working at the Herald since 1993. He is the Business Herald’s deputy editor and covers aviation and tourism.