Jeju, Eastar, and Air Premia Restored in 12 Hours
92 Flights Delayed Across 3 Airlines at Domestic Airports
The systems of domestic low-cost carriers (LCCs), which experienced service disruptions due to an 'information technology (IT) crisis' triggered by Microsoft (MS) cloud, were restored within 12 hours.
According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the aviation industry on the 20th, the ticketing and reservation systems and online homepages of Jeju Air, Eastar Jet, and Air Premia, which had errors starting around 3:30 PM the previous day, were fully restored by around 3:30 AM on the same day.
According to the Ministry, a total of 92 flights of these three LCCs were delayed, including 31 flights at Incheon International Airport and 61 flights at domestic airports such as Gimpo and Jeju, with no cancellations.
Other domestic airlines and airports, aside from the three LCCs, had their own cloud systems in place, so there were no operational disruptions.
Among foreign airlines operating domestically, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and Air France also experienced the same issue. Foreign airline flights faced 4 cancellations and 6 delays at Incheon Airport until 4 AM that day. Additionally, 3 flights were delayed at other airports, totaling 13 flights that had difficulties operating normally.
Most IT systems of foreign airlines have been restored. However, some airlines such as Tigerair and West Pacific are undergoing phased restoration depending on flight operations.
When the system error occurred the previous day, airlines conducted check-ins with manual ticketing at airports. Due to flight delays, Gimpo Airport postponed the start time of the curfew (nighttime landing and takeoff ban) by 2 hours to 1 AM. Gimhae Airport adjusted it by 1 hour to midnight. Thanks to this, some flights that had been canceled were able to operate normally.
This incident was caused by a failure in the passenger service system Navitaire used by the three LCCs. Navitaire is serviced through MS's cloud service Azure, and a problem occurred in Azure due to a conflict between the MS operating system (OS) and security software.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport stated, "Delays due to aircraft connections are still expected on some flights," and added, "The government, Incheon International Airport Corporation, and Korea Airports Corporation will continuously monitor airport operations until full normalization to closely ensure that passengers do not experience inconvenience."
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