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SAIPAN (RNZ PACIFIC) – The global technology outage that hit last weekend was not immune, with airlines, hotels, utilities and possibly even hospitals experiencing some form of disruption due to a faulty Microsoft Windows system update.
The Commonwealth Ports Authority (CPA) said its flights were delayed for several hours due to a global computer glitch.
“It may take another day to get everyone back to normal operations. Even the first United Airlines flight from Saipan to Guam today took about three hours to manually check in before leaving Saipan,” CPA Chairman Jose Ayuyu said Monday.
CPA Executive Director Leo Tudela said the Jeju Air flight was scheduled to arrive in Saipan around 3 a.m. last Friday, but arrived at Saipan International Airport around 7 p.m., while the United Airlines flight was scheduled to arrive in Saipan around 9 a.m. last Friday, but arrived around 3 a.m. Saturday.
In addition to flight delays to Saipan, the airport’s check-in counters were also affected by technical glitches, and Tudela said many things had to be done manually when checking in passengers.
For example, many CBP agents were at the airport screening travelers arriving in Saipan because CBP’s systems were also affected by the technical outage as they had to switch from a paperless to a manual process.
Meanwhile, Dennis Theo, president of the Northern Mariana Islands Hotel Association, said local hotels were also affected by the global technology glitch.
“Apparently some of our members are experiencing issues due to the Microsoft global outage, including computer issues and credit card merchant outages,” he said.
“Several international passenger flights from South Korea were also delayed for several hours due to a system glitch. They had to manually check passengers before boarding.”
Seo shared that most hotels have crisis management or emergency playbooks in place to deal with possible computer system disruptions, such as last weekend’s Microsoft global outage or even power outages.
“We already have standard operating procedures for system disruptions through the typhoons in 2015 and 2018. Therefore, we are confident that we will be able to take all necessary measures to ensure that customers who are exhausted by flight delays can use the hotel without inconvenience.
“We will also take this opportunity to thoroughly review and update our emergency manual to ensure we are fully prepared. In addition, we advise passengers to check their flight status in case there are delays when they fly to their destination,” Seo said.
Also experiencing outages over the weekend was the Commonwealth Utilities Corporation (CUC), which sent out a notice on Friday informing communities that its prepayment system was down.
“CUC would like to inform the public that its electricity prepayment system is currently offline due to a technical glitch experienced by the supplier. Electricity prepayment customers who lost power prior to the 3:30 pm system outage and wish to have their electricity service reconnected are advised to log in to their CUC account to pay their bills.
“After payment, please call Customer Service for help reconnecting. Currently connected electricity customers will not be impacted by this outage. CUC appreciates the community’s patience as its meter software provider works to restore Pay-Go service,” the CUC notice said.
CUC’s Betty Terlaje said in a statement that the outage was caused by a global technical failure, but fortunately, CUC restored the system in just four hours.
Commonwealth Healthcare Corporation, which manages the local hospital, said it would check today to see if its systems were also affected by the global IT outage.
Telecommunications company Docomo Pacific and First Hawaiian Bank, as well as small businesses, said they did not appear to be affected by the technical outages over the weekend.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Guam’s systems were reportedly temporarily unavailable, impacting certain functions of its online banking and branch operations, as well as some ATMs.
Guam’s Japanese supermarket Don Don Donki announced Friday that it will only accept cash until further notice.
Due to network issues, debit cards, credit cards, EBT and DONKI apps are temporarily unavailable.
Rolena Faasuamalie, a spokeswoman for Guam Airport, said that did not happen on Friday.
“Our airport operations professionals are monitoring the situation. We are aware of numerous media reports of a ‘power outage’ affecting all phases of flight arrivals and departures,” she said.
Passengers are advised to contact their airline to determine if their planned travel is affected in any way.
The Cook Islands government said the country had not been affected by the global IT outage.
A spokesman said the government’s IT team spent two days thoroughly checking the system and everything was operating normally.
Samoa’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said it is closely monitoring the CrowdStrike cyberattack.
The ministry said in a statement that some operating systems other than Linux and Apple, among the users of Microsoft, could be affected.
The ministry strongly recommends that organizations ensure their IT staff recover computer system files and ensure that there is always backup storage of files and systems in case of digital crisis…PACNEWS
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