Concerns over disruption at Auckland Airport as holidays approach

Massive disruptions at Auckland International Airport on Wednesday have sparked concerns about how the airport will handle the holiday period.

Board of Airline Representatives executive director Cath O’Brien told the Morning Report that a network outage meant airlines had to use manual processes to check in customers, creating long queues and was seeing canceled or delayed flights, and the baggage system wasn’t working either.

Some passengers told RNZ they were tired, frustrated and hungry after queuing from 3am on Wednesday. The issue was resolved around 9:40 a.m., with staff on hand with snacks and water, as well as support for parents traveling with young children.

O’Brien said there was a major problem with the baggage system, with at least 20 breakdowns at Auckland Airport in the past month.

“Yesterday was an extremely difficult day for customers at the airport and I’m really sorry people had to experience this.

“It’s a very busy time of year… Auckland Airport is working on a lot of improvements. They chose to upgrade the system as we approach this time. And unfortunately it has been much less stable than I thought.” of course, they or we would like to.”

O’Brien said having the baggage system fail so frequently caused “quite a bit of difficulty” because the bags had to go to another location to be screened and then manually moved to the plane.

“I think the airport is working hard to, you know, resolve the issues. And you know, we’re all keeping our fingers crossed.

“But at this point I think we need to start planning for the additional resources we will need to get through the Christmas period. If this continues, and as has happened about 20 times over the last month, it will will probably continue.” this will happen in the coming weeks. »

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