MORRISVILLE
Computer problems that caused flight cancellations and delays at Raleigh-Durham International Airport’s Terminal 2 have been repaired, RDU officials said Tuesday afternoon.
The problem with the airport’s computer network knocked out the ability of several airlines to check in passengers and resulted in the cancellation of about 12 percent of the flights that were headed to and from Terminal 2. All the canceled flights were on Delta, United and American airlines.
RDU CEO Michael Landguth said at least 75 people, including consultants, vendors and RDU staff, worked to fix the problem, which was identified around 5 a.m. The issue was in the airport’s network in the building, not in airline company systems.
“Our information services team worked hard with RDU’s technical partners and diagnosed the issue and solved the problem,” he said. “The problem was in the system firmware or code, which was corrected about 2:15 this afternoon. We expect airport and airline operations to return to normal by the end of the night.”
Landguth said three of the system’s hard drives failed, but the manufacturer was able to diagnose the problem – a bug in one of the devices – and fix it. Ironically, he said, the system was scheduled to be replaced on Thursday.
“We will continue to evaluate the system integrity and make necessary improvements to ensure this type of failure does not happen again,” he said.
Landguth said because of the hardware issue, airport staff could not check people in at ticket counters, but fliers could check in at the kiosks. In some cases, he said, staff had to write bag tags by hand.
“Predominately, (check in) is all through those kiosks, which is limiting our capability,” he said prior to the system being repaired.
Officials urged travelers to check with their airlines before heading to their airport if their airline operates out of Terminal 2. For flights that are operating, fliers are encouraged to arrive early to give themselves additional time to get through long kiosk lines.
Because of the computer issues, some flights could still be delayed or canceled throughout the rest of the day, Landguth said.
Terminal 1, where Southwest Airlines operates, was having no problems with the network there.
