Check-ins at Gatwick hit by IT failure

Systems down at both terminals over weekend

Passengers at London’s Gatwick Airport suffered delays at the weekend when an IT failure affected a number of check-in systems, forcing airline staff to resort to writing out boarding passes by hand.

At the time of going to press, airport operator BAA was unable to determine the cause of the problem, but said that an investigation was under way.

The computer glitch, which started on Friday night, affected check-in systems across the airport’s North and South terminals over the weekend. It took until Sunday for airport IT staff to bring the systems back online.

The problem was said to affect check-in systems for every airline except British Airways, which operates separate reservation systems from other airlines.

BAA completed a major £20m infrastructure renewal project this summer, enabling a series of technology initiatives that it hopes will improve passenger services in the seven airports it operates across the UK (Computing, 4 August).

The project, codenamed WebTop, centralised and rationalised the company’s IT architecture from 2,500 applications to 500, operated from two data centres, under the initiative.