IT Failures at Spanish Airports Lead to Major Disruptions
Friday, July 19th, 2024
A significant issue with computer systems is currently causing widespread disruption at all Spanish airports, including Palma de Mallorca. The airport operator Aena issued the following statement:
“All airports in the network in Spain are operational and flights are being operated in cooperation with the airlines.
Airports and airlines around the world are affected by the same incident.
The day’s schedule is being adhered to, albeit with some delays. Some airlines are rescheduling their operations.
In the early hours of the morning, contingency systems were activated and some processes were managed manually to maintain operations.
Aena is already recovering some of its systems, after having suffered the effects of a global IT incident affecting companies all over the world.
All airports are operational, but some processes are inevitably operating more slowly than usual, which is causing some delays.
In the early hours of the morning, contingency systems were activated and some processes were managed manually to maintain operations which, for the moment, are on schedule for the day, albeit with some delays. Some airlines are rescheduling operations
Airlines and airports of other international carriers affected by the same problem are also trying to fully recover their systems.
Both departure and arrival operations are running with decreasing delays, but have not come to a standstill at any time.”
Given the summer season, the island is expected to handle a high volume of flights. Despite some delays, there have been no major issues with take-offs and landings at Palma Airport thus far. However, internal airport operations are more severely affected, resulting in long queues at the check-in counters due to problems with the check-in process and the issuance of boarding passes.
The ticket machines and barriers required for entry and exit at both the multi-storey car park and the express parking facilities are also impacted by the IT problems. Consequently, car park tickets must be issued manually by airport staff.
The disruptions are not confined to Palma Airport or other Spanish airports. Airports, banks, news channels and many other companies around the world are reporting massive IT problems. The London Stock Exchange and several railway companies in the UK are also facing outages.
The cause appears to lie with Microsoft. Apparently, the update of a malware tool has affected the cloud system to which companies all over the world are connected.
