AirAsia resumes normal operations after IT outage

As of today, 22 July, AirAsia has resumed normal operations, having recovered all its systems impacted by the outage as it continues to run service recovery for guests impacted over the weekend.

Since Friday’s outage, the airline has already connected over 500,000 guests via 3,000 flights to their destinations since the global IT outage on19 July despite the disruption to its Departure Control Systems (DCS.}

The outage triggered flight delays due to manual processing for two days, causing inconvenience to passengers at various airports. 

Safety remains a priority

Given that manual processing involves meticulous regulatory and immigration compliance procedures to prioritise airline safety, security and border requirements, many guests experienced long queues as they had to be verified individually. 

With the volume of flights and passengers during the weekend, this contributed to flight delays. However, AirAsia successfully operated over 99 per cent of its flights during this time.

AirAsia Aviation Group CEO Bo Lingam said: “We are grateful to have been able to connect over half a million guests across our 130 destination network when the world was reeling from the impact of the global IT outage. Thanks to the presence of a robust Business Continuity Plan and the timely decision to switch to a standalone manual mode, guests were able to continue on their journeys safely. However this meant navigating the delays of meticulous manual processing.”

He added that the airline’s Business Continuity Plan is focused on supporting continuity in any scenario, as long as there is compliance with laid down safety and security measures. It was fortunate that AirAsia had the systems, people and processes to be able to switch to manual with agility, and a robust ground plan to support passengers.

Bo also commended the airline’s ground staff, ICT teams, security personnel and hundreds of volunteers and teams who worked around the clock to keep things running. 

Despite this return to normalcy, AirAsia passengers are still advised to monitor the status of their flights by checking their registered email and mobile phones for flight updates, and to keep posted on updates on the official website and social media channels.