Radio New Zealand reports that a "widespread" computer glitch on Air New Zealand's check-in kiosks and call-in center and online-booking systems affected 10,000 airline passengers Sunday.
According to the report, the systems, which are provided by IBM, were down for more than six hours, causing serious issues for travelers as a school holiday came to an end:
The company's short haul airlines manager Bruce Parton describes the situation as a "full-blown system meltdown," never seen before. He says computer company IBM's performance has fallen well short of expectation. … Mr. Parton says at this stage, Air New Zealand does not know what caused the disruption, and the company will address that with IBM on Monday.
Air New Zealand spent $30 million to deploy the self-check-in kiosks last November, the report says.
