Outsourced check-in fails Qantas

Qantas check-ins were thrown into disarray last night due to a problem with the system provided to it by travel system specialist Amadeus.

(Qantas 747-300 image
by planegeezer, CC2.0)

The system went down at around 5pm in the afternoon, meaning that staff had to use manual procedures for check-in, causing delays of around an hour to domestic and international flights, according to a Qantas spokesperson.

"There were extensive delays across our international and domestic networks," the spokesperson said, adding, however, that there were no cancellations and all flights met curfew arrangements.

The problem took around 3.5 hours to fix, bringing the system back on line at around 8:15pm. There would be no "major impact" to operations today, according to the spokesperson.

Along with Qantas, other global carriers which used Amadeus were also affected. Qantas was working with Amadeus to prevent a similar event occurring again, according to the spokesperson.

In 2007, Qantas re-signed with Amadeus for customer management for 10 years until 2017. The provider was set to roll-out a new check-in and baggage handling module to the airline last year.

Yesterday's check-in problem comes just a week after the carrier announced that it wanted to halve check-in times using new technology.