AIRASIA RESUMES ONLINE CHECK-IN AT 2 PM, CONTINUES TO MONITOR SITUATION -- DEPUTY GROUP CEO

By Kisho Kumari Sucedaram & Norhayati Mohd Akhir

KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 (Bernama) -- AirAsia has resumed its online check-in operation at 2 pm today, after the carrier was thrown into turmoil by a global information technology (IT) glitch since late afternoon yesterday.

AirAsia deputy group chief executive officer (airline operation) Datuk Captain Chester Voo said the low-cost carrier would continue to monitor the situation.

He advised passengers to arrive early at the airport to avoid potential delays and long queues.

“Regardless of the challenge, we are extremely resilient because it’s important for us to put people first, as they pay money to fly, although the disruption is global and not caused by us,” he told Bernama.

Voo reported that today, AirAsia is managing over 168,000 passengers on 941 flights across its seven Air Operator's Certificates (AOCs), which include AirAsia Malaysia, AirAsia Philippines, AirAsia Indonesia, Thai AirAsia, AirAsia Cambodia, AirAsia X and Thai AirAsia X.

He said this was the first time in recent years that the airline had experienced a system blackout of such magnitude, necessitating a complete switch to paper mode.

“With all the experts we have and the backup data, we worked tirelessly to locate passengers accordingly. In manual mode, every process needs to be verified as everything is regulated in the airline industry.

“We need to go through the safety, regulatory and compliance processes manually, which means people have to endure long queues to be verified one at a time, and that is very painful,” he explained.

The airline has strengthened its operations to manage the weekend rush at the airport by deploying more than 200 ground staff, nearly 100 Allstars volunteers and security personnel to help mitigate the situation.

Voo also expressed hope that on-time performance (OTP) would return to normal with the resumption of the online check-in system.

“We had about 88 per cent OTP, but with this global chaos, it gradually dropped further. We hope to be back to normal soon,” he said.

He thanked all the passengers for their patience and trust in AirAsia during this global outage managed in full manual mode.

“We would also like to thank the Ministry of Transport, the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia, Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd, and all relevant ministries and agencies for their support and assistance during the crisis,” he added.

Earlier on Friday, major institutions such as airlines, banks, media channels and hospitals in several countries were reportedly affected by the global IT outage.

The outage was linked to global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings Inc, an American cybersecurity technology company based in Austin, Texas, that provides endpoint protection, threat intelligence and cyberattack response services.

— BERNAMA