Computer glitch forces ANA to cancel 53 flights

TOKYO, Sept. 14 Kyodo - A computer glitch forced All Nippon Airways Co. to cancel a total of 53 domestic flights and delay more than 200 flights Sunday, creating inconvenience for some 51,000 passengers.

The failure hit the computer system which controls flight reservations, check-in, and baggage control, disabling check-in counters at 50 airports nationwide, and forced ANA to deal with the procedures manually, it said.

While the system was restored at around 11:45 a.m., travelers were heavily
inconvenienced throughout the second day of a three-day weekend. Monday is a
Japanese national holiday.
''We apologize to clients for causing so much trouble,'' Ko Nakamura, chief of
ANA's public relations office, said at a press conference. Flights will operate
normally as scheduled Monday, the airline said.
The canceled flights include those from Haneda Airport in Tokyo to Sapporo,
Toyama, Osaka, Okayama, Hiroshima, Takamatsu, Fukuoka, Nagasaki and Miyazaki,
ANA said.
The glitch also affected flights of Hokkaido International Airlines, known as
Air Do, Star Flyer, Skynet Asia Airways and IBEX Airlines, all of which jointly
use the system with ANA.
ANA found the problem in the morning when about 1,000 computer terminals at ANA
counters in various domestic airports were unable to be activated.
It suspects that the problem was due to malfunction of a server, which controls
data transmissions between a host computer and terminals.
ANA experienced the same kind of problem in May last year, when 131 of its
domestic flights were canceled, affecting nearly 70,000 passengers.
==Kyodo