Glitch In System Upgrade Identified As Cause of Delays At Singapore Immigration

Technical glitch during a scheduled upgrade affected all automated immigration clearance systems and led to rare delays at Singapore's Changi Airport, which recently was again named the world's best airport. ZDNet reports: Long lines were spotted Thursday morning at the country's airport where travelers usually would not need more than mere minutes to clear immigration. In a series of posts on Facebook and Twitter, Singapore's Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said it was experiencing "system slowness" at several passenger clearance checkpoints, including all automated departure lanes at all terminals at Changi Airport. Selected automated systems at the Woodlands and Tuas border checkpoints, through which travelers would enter neighboring country Malaysia, also were affected. Immigration systems at coastal checkpoints were the only ones that were not disrupted.

Passengers were advised to postpone non-essential travel and expect delays, as they would be redirected to manual lanes for immigration clearance. By 4pm the same day, automated immigration clearance at all checkpoints were back up and running. ICA said in a statement late-Thursday that preliminary investigations revealed a "technical glitch" had occurred during a pre-scheduled system upgrade, causing an "unanticipated system overload". This brought down the automated immigration clearance systems, which affected all departure terminals at Changi Airport and arrival terminals at Terminals 2 and 4. ICA did not provide details on the system upgrade or whether the procedure was tested before the scheduled live rollout.