Passengers caught up in major delays at international airports in Australia and New Zealand say the check-in queues were the longest they have ever seen.
Airline staff were forced to manually process check-ins for hours after the 8am outage on Monday of the Advance Passenger Processing system – a globally-used, border-clearance passport process.
Photos uploaded to social media show enormous queues of people snaking the length of airport foyers in Sydney and Melbourne.
“Thanks for your patience this morning. Most airlines are now checking-in for flights. Delays may take a while to work through the system,” Melbourne Airport tweeted at 10am on Monday.
A Sydney Airport spokeswoman says its system came back on at 10.40am.
Brisbane Airport was also affected by the shutdown, prompting manual check-ins, but no flights were delayed, a spokeswoman told AAP.
Flight check-ins are being affected across the Tasman, with Auckland Airport tweeting “Immigration NZ’s national system has gone down. Updates to follow”.
Those flying internationally are advised to contact their airline to check the status of their service.
Anxious customers have since voiced concerns about making it onto their connecting flights.
“Nobody able to check-in at Sydney Airport. Nobody. I’ve never seen lines this long in an airport,” passenger Chris Walker-Bush tweeted earlier on Monday.
Traveller Andrew Jessup tweeted a photo of the “huge queues” captioned: “Bedlam at Sydney Airport”.
All international flights to and from Australia are subject to mandatory APP reporting provided by airlines through the APP system, according to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
“This facilitates a more streamlined border clearance process for travellers and enhances the Australian Government’s ability to target security concerns,” the department’s website states.
Source: Flight check-in delays in Australia, NZ | SBS News
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