Computer outage delays flights

A glitch in the computer network of the Immigration Department caused travel chaos at the two busiest airports of the Kingdom yesterday morning.
The computer outage at Riyadh and Jeddah airports delayed hundreds of travelers and embarrassed several airlines at a time when they are trying to win back customers after prolonged aviation strikes and massive snow storms across Europe that caused several airlines to suspend flights last week.
“The departure of dozens of international flights from Riyadh and Jeddah international airports was delayed by several hours following the problem in the computer network of the immigration counters yesterday,” according to airport sources and airlines managers. “In fact, a breakdown in systems at immigration resulted in delayed flights and long waits for inbound and outbound passengers,” said Prabhu Chandran, Air India manager.
“The Air India flight to Calicut was delayed because of the outage,” said Chandran. “We were told that the immigration computer system was down from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. on Sunday at the Riyadh-based King Khalid International Airport (KKIA) that caused inconvenience to airlines as well to passengers,” said Chandran. Airport sources also confirmed that several flights bound for different international destinations were delayed by two to three hours following system failure.
“Passengers, who arrived at the airports in Riyadh and Jeddah were forced to wait for two hours or more for immigration clearance following the system failure,” said an airport official.
“Passport checks were affected by the shutdown, leaving one of my relative to wait for two hours after landing at King Abdulaziz Airport this morning,” said Shaji Nihal, manager of Al-Blagha Travels (Spicejet GSA).