Changi hit by delays due to glitch

An issue with Singapore’s immigration systems saw Changi Airport warn of delays and queues of people form at the city-state’s land borders.

Singapore’s immigration and checkpoint authority advised people to delay non-essential travel because of the disruption, which is slowing down its processing systems.

Off-duty immigration officers are being called in to manually process departing passengers at Changi with all the automated lanes affected, the authority said. Some automated lanes at Singapore’s Woodlands and Tuas checkpoints on its land border with Malaysia are also impacted.

Changi advised fliers to arrive earlier for their flights in a post on its Facebook page as of 1:35 pm.

Travellers across terminals are impacted, according to Changi.

Social media posts from inside the airport showed queues of people at the departure gates.

The system slowness added to wait times at the land checkpoints which can see as many as 400,000 commuters each day to get to work as well as deliver produce across the Singapore-Malaysia causeway. Traffic tends to be heavier on Fridays as workers return home for the weekend.

Rated the world’s top airport for the 12th time by Skytrax earlier this month, Changi handled 68.3 million passengers in 2019, before the Covid pandemic severely damaged the global travel industry.

In the first two months of this year, 8.37 million people passed through the airport.

Changi doubled down on introducing contactless technology during the pandemic in a bid to smooth transit through the airport once travellers returned en-masse. Self check-in kiosks and baggage drops operate when a person hovers their finger over a screen.

Passengers use automated immigration gates that scan faces and irises if those biometrics are registered in a passport.