All Nippon Airways Co. canceled more than 100 domestic flights out of Tokyo's Haneda airport Sunday afternoon after a computer system glitch disrupted the reservation, ticket issuing and boarding process.
Before the cancellation, a number of flights were delayed by as long as two hours.
The trouble also affected regional airlines such as Skynet Asia Airways Co., IBEX Airlines Co. and Hokkaido International Airlines Co., known as Air Do, whose systems are linked with that of ANA.
ANA said the trouble was caused by a glitch in the system controlling the reservation process as well as boarding and luggage flows, making it difficult to issue boarding passes.
The airline resolved the trouble around 3:30 p.m. and resumed flights around 6 p.m.
A total of 130 flights were canceled and 306 flights were delayed by more than an hour, affecting a total of about 69,000 passengers, ANA said. Some flights Monday were also expected to face delays.
The trouble at Haneda also disrupted operations in other airports, with ANA canceling 13 Haneda-bound flights out of Itami airport in Osaka Prefecture and Kansai International Airport.
The system instability started early in the day, causing delays in ticketing procedures in a number of airports nationwide and forcing ANA to issue some tickets manually, airline officials said.
As the number of flights increased through the day, the impact became more pronounced, the officials said.
The airline had been seeking to fix the system since Saturday night, when its host computer started malfunctioning, ANA officials said. The glitch was fixed when old data that accumulated in the host computer was deleted.
ANA suspects the problem may have been caused by the recent introduction of new systems that connect the host computer and its terminals at airports.
