Over 10,000 travellers grounded after Japan’s ANA’s check-in systems malfunction

A failure of All Nippon Airways’ check-in systems at 50 airports in Japan led to the cancellation of dozens of domestic flights on Tuesday, affecting over 10,000 passengers.

The major Japanese air carrier said the glitch hit at around 8.20am at all airports where it has flight services, bringing online check-ins and passenger confirmation at boarding gates to a standstill. The system problem was resolved about three hours later.

ANA also suffered a problem with its check-in system at 48 domestic airports in February, causing a delay of up to 40 minutes in the departure of some of its flights. The system was restored in 26 minutes, but the cause remains unclear.

The company is checking whether the latest incident is related in some way to the previous trouble.

Four other domestic airline operators that share the same check-in system – Starflyer, Airdo, Solaseed Air and Ibex Airlines – also experienced the same trouble.

ANA cancelled 87 domestic flights as of 12.30pm, including those that were scheduled to leave Sapporo in Hokkaido, Haneda in Tokyo and Itami in Osaka Prefecture. The departure of many other flights was delayed, affecting a total of about 10,300 travellers.