Two of Southeast Asia's busiest airports are down. Both are from Malaysia.
The Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and klia2 began experiencing a massive system outage starting August 21 and as of press time (August 23) the airport operator is still figuring out what could have caused the issue.
Mashable Southeast Asia videographer, John Prabakaran Solomon, who is supposed to be traveling to Vietnam for a holiday with his family is among the many who're affected.
"The situation is super chaotic because the Malaysia Airport staff don't tell you which gate you should be at to board your flight until an hour before," he says, adding that passengers are being notified through a white board and a projector.
"Even the self check-in kiosks had long queues. The entire process is slow and there's a lot of waiting to do," John adds.
On the ground, several Malaysia Airport staff are assisting in the process by helping passengers check their details before boarding their flights.
According to a passenger who preferred remaining anonymous, she had been here for a few hours.
"I had to wake up at 5am today just to come to klia2 before 8am," the passenger tells Mashable Southeast Asia.
Some passengers have been queuing up for more than six hours just to get to their turn to board their flights.
Malaysia Airports, who operates the airport, is currently working around the clock to stabilize the system. It is unclear what had caused the outage.
In a press statement, the operator said 38 remote bays at KLIA Main Terminal have been allocated to allow aircraft that were unable to go to their respective gates as per schedule.
"Following this, we have also provided four additional buses, as well as ground handling services for the airlines in order to facilitate passenger movements to ferry passengers to the remote bays from the terminal and vice versa," the statement reads.
Additionally, operating hours has been extended due to the delayed flights with passengers provided free parking at the KLIA terminal.
Doing things manually when systems fail at a major airport (KLIA).
(?: @hasifpls @abqorian) pic.twitter.com/iCSHWttKjM — Sumisha Naidu (@sumishanaidu) August 23, 2019
This is the first time the airport has experienced such a disruption which caused numerous flights to be delayed. Malaysia Airports, however, has not revealed how many flights were affected.
Among the affected flights are those traveling to these locations: Singapore, Japan, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Myanmar, the U.K., Dubai, Bangladesh, and India.
Even domestic flights to Penang, Kuching and Sibu have been affected. Yikes! Here's hoping the system gets fixed real soon.
Cover image by John Prabakaran Solomon / Mashable Southeast Asia.
