Qantas check-in meltdown causes delays

[Kyo]

From: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/...elays/?rss=yes

Sensationalist reporting? More like Amadeus meltdown?

A three-hour crash of Qantas' check-in system has caused delays to domestic and international flights across the country, with passengers having to be manually processed.

The Amadeus system crashed at 5pm (AEDT), throwing Qantas and other major airlines into chaos before it was rectified just after 8pm.

The airline reported delays of between 45 minutes and one hour because of the technical hitch but now says services across the country are returning to normal.

"We were experiencing some technical issues as of about 5pm with our Amadeus check-in system," a Qantas spokeswoman said.

"As a consequence, our staff were having to check people in manually, which was causing delays across the network.

"There are still delays through the network as we are working through the backlog but we expect people to get away quicker than they have been."

The meltdown also affected major international airlines, such as United Airlines, British Airways and Thai Airways because they also use the Amadeus check-in system.

Services would return to normal on Monday night, the Qantas spokeswoman said.

[KeithMEL]

I wasn't aware that it's an Amadeus-wide issue until I saw threads on this on at least a few different forums. All the stories early yesterday were on how Qantas check in systems had collapsed globally. But I see that they've clarified the facts a little to report that it affected all airlines using Amadeus. As for the headline, I suppose it's natural for the Australian news media to want to focus on Qantas to bring local interests into the story and simplify things a little especially as not many people would know what Amadeus is.