12-Hour Ticketing Delay at Incheon Airport Leaves 1,200 Passengers Stranded

[Anchor]

Yesterday (October 30), airline check-in systems at Incheon International Airport experienced a 12-hour outage. Ticketing was completely halted for three Chinese airlines, leaving 1,200 passengers stranded.

Reporter Park Seyong has the details.

[Reporter]

Around 4:30 AM yesterday, a malfunction occurred in the computer network used by airlines for ticketing.

This network is managed by the US company Airlink, and communications were intermittently disconnected across a total of 13 airlines, including 8 in Terminal 1 and 5 in Terminal 2.

However, by the afternoon, ticketing was completely halted for three Chinese carriers: China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, and Air China.

A total of 35 flights were delayed, including a flight to Hangzhou scheduled to depart at 12:30 PM and a flight to Shanghai scheduled for 12:55 PM.

[Gong Seon-mi / Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi Province: I arrived at 11:00 AM. My scheduled departure time was 2:30 PM, so I came a bit early, but I am just waiting around without being able to go anywhere.]

[Son Ho-young / Suwon, Gyeonggi Province: My flight is at 4:00 PM, and I wanted to go in early. I planned to go inside and get things done, but I cannot do anything right now.]

Some passengers were seen protesting to the airlines.

[You need to find a solution quickly!]

For some passengers facing imminent departure, airlines resorted to manually writing names and seat numbers on boarding passes to issue them on a limited basis.

The ticketing system malfunction was restored around 5:00 PM, more than 12 hours after it first occurred.

Incheon International Airport Corporation considers the possibility of hacking to be low, given that the issue occurred only in certain airlines.

However, the exact cause is expected to be revealed through further investigation.

(Camera: Lee Sang-hak | Video Editing: Kim Jun-hee | VJ: Jeong Han-uk)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.