SINGAPORE: Singapore’s Changi Airport said on Saturday (Jul 20) morning that check-in operations have returned to normal for most airlines affected by Friday’s IT outage that affected businesses globally.
Airlines were forced to implement manual check-ins at Changi and airports around the world after a software update by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike brought down computer systems running on the Microsoft Windows operating system.
In a Facebook post on Saturday morning, Changi Airport said a small number of airlines still required manual check-ins.
“SERIOUS AND CONCERNING”
Mrs Josephine Teo, Singapore’s Minister for Digital Development and Information, called the outage “serious and concerning”.
“My team has been working through the night to support companies in Singapore whose services to the public were affected by the outages,” said Mrs Teo in a Facebook post on Saturday afternoon. “Our immediate priority was to help them recover, and I am glad that most of these services are back to normal.”
Her comments follow a statement by her ministry stating most companies affected by the outage had restored their services to the public as of 6am on Saturday.
“These include airline check-in services, newspapers, radio and postal services,” said the Ministry for Digital Development and Information, adding that it was closely monitoring the situation and would provide assistance to the companies if needed.
Mrs Teo also said that as the situation unfolded worldwide, it was “clear the impact on Singapore, while concerning, was not the worst that could have been”.
She noted that essential and government services were mostly unaffected and some of the services that were disrupted, such as postal services, recovered relatively quickly as business continuity plans were activated.
“While we were less impacted, it will be unwise to think that we are more resilient than others,” she said.
“Although experts have so far ruled out the likelihood that cyber attacks caused these outages, the point remains valid – we must always plan for recovery and be able to implement those plans swiftly when needed,” she added.
“We will be engaging Microsoft and other companies as well as consulting our counterparts to learn as much as we can from the incident and its aftermath.”
Hong Kong International Airport has also resumed normal operations, Chinese state media said on Saturday.
Airlines’ passenger check-in systems, which had been affected by the global outage, have returned to normal, CCTV said in a Weibo post, citing the city’s airport authority.
