Wild winds and IT outage wreak havoc at Sydney Airport

By Christian Fleetwood

Travellers flying from Sydney Airport have been met with massive delays due to an Australian Border Force outage and gale force winds.

An outage affecting Australian Border Force passport security e-gates at airports on Monday morning has been resolved, after delays at Sydney Airport left thousands of holidaymakers dead-locked for hours.

The start of the queue to get into international departures, we are all wondering if 2 hr early is enough. #sydneyairport pic.twitter.com/E64adpC6fj

— Douglas Abdiel (@dougabdiel) July 14, 2019

The ABF confirmed on Twitter the issue had been rectified and staff were working to minimise earlier delays. It is believed the issue related to immigration procesessing and affected airports nation-wide, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Our staff are working hard to minimise earlier delays caused by an outage. All issues have now been rectified. We appreciate the patience of passengers at this time and apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. pic.twitter.com/lOIU36J5Zp

— ABF (@AusBorderForce) July 15, 2019

This followed cancellations to hundreds of flights due to wild weather at the weekend.

On Saturday, Sydney Domestic Airport was forced to use a single runway after wild winds of up to 70 kilometres per hour swept across the state, prompting many airlines to cancel or delay their flights.

Airservices Australia announced that Sydney Airport was experiencing delays, tweeting that customers expecting to fly should check the status of their flights.

✈️ We’re experiencing delays today due to the strong winds in Sydney. Please check with your airline for flight status: https://t.co/6RJl1uGRKl

— Sydney Airport (@SydneyAirport) July 13, 2019

Qantas, Jetstar, Virgin Australia, Tigerair and Rex were all forced to cancel numerous scheduled flights out of Sydney, leaving a slew of unhappy customers inconvenienced by the wild weather.

A Qantas spokesperson told Travel Weekly that the airline had a number of services cancelled across the weekend, but confirmed that the vast majority of customers got to their destination on the same day.

“We also operated supplementary services between Sydney and Melbourne to help cater for impacted customers and get them to their destinations as quickly as possible.”

According to Qantas, single runway operations are continuing this morning.

A Jetstar spokesperson told Travel Weekly the low-cost carrier had around 40 domestic cancellations to and from Sydney because of the weather, Jetstar is still experiencing disruptions to service.

Virgin Australia said it worked as “quickly” and “safely” as possible to get its customers where they needed to go.

“There were 15 cancellations on Saturday and a number of delays to flights in and out of Sydney Airport over the course of the weekend,” a Virgin Australia spokesperson told Travel Weekly.

Out of the 35 of its total flights into Sydney Domestic Airport, however, Tiger Air only had to cancel four. A spokesperson for the airline told Travel Weekly delays were experienced until the network slowly returned to normal.

“Tigerair Australia worked hard to get affected passengers on their way as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson told Travel Weekly, adding: “We know delays are frustrating, however the safety of our customers and crew is our number one priority.”

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

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