Subscribe

Info board blackout at OR Tambo

By Bandile Sikwane, ITWeb journalist
Johannesburg, 24 Nov 2006

Yesterday's information board failure at OR Tambo International Airport caused delays throughout the day.

Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) authorities have assured passengers its technicians are working hard to determine the cause of the blackout.

"The database of our operations scheduling system - it schedules check-in desks, boarding gates and allocates slots - was found to have been corrupted the night before," says Solomon Makgale, ACSA's communications manager.

"The operations team could not load a schedule for Thursday's flights. We had to resort to doing things manually, which delayed flights by an hour or so, adds Makgale.

He says ACSA technicians worked on the problem throughout the night and most of Thursday morning. "By around 1pm on Thursday, the system was operational.

Makgale says the monetary cost of the outages is still to be determined. "It is common to have delays and technical glitches in aviation, but we are working hard with the IT department to determine the cause of the database corruption.

"Operations are running smoothly today, but we would like to apologise to our passengers and stakeholders for the inconvenience. Our IT department is monitoring the system to see if we pick up any other issues."

Share