Dozens of Aena employees circulated through the departure terminal of Barcelona's El Prat airport this Friday, waving a stack of blank plane tickets. “Someone who doesn't have to invoice?” they asked out loud. In front of them, thousands of people with suitcases and the same doubts.
The failure of a computer system update that affected Microsoft's cloud computing system caused chaos at El Prat airport on a Friday in the middle of summer, when a large number of workers were starting their holidays.
The queues at the check-in desks numbered hundreds of people and the screens showing information about the company each corresponded to were damaged: instead of the logos of the airlines, those of the airport services companies that manage them appeared.
Aena employees started handing out handwritten tickets to reduce the mile-long queues at these points. These employees hand-copied the tickets of travelers who did not need to check in luggage and could not get their tickets online because the registrations failed.
“This is your ticket now,” an Aena employee told a disbelieving traveler after he had obtained the handwritten ticket. “This is like the 20th century,” he laughed before preparing to enter an even more crowded line, the one for security.
At the entrance to the security checkpoint, workers stopped checking the QR codes on the tickets and let through almost anyone who showed a piece of paper.
Given the increase in queues, there has come a time when Aena employees have chosen to issue tickets to all national travelers, even with suitcases that need to be checked, and instruct them to go to the security check with the large packages that they normally cannot carry.
“At first it was just people with hand luggage, but now we give it to everyone and they take their suitcases to the hold,” admitted one employee who handed out these tickets. “But it seems like it will take some time to sort this out.”
Meanwhile, passengers were informed over the public address system that a “computer problem” was causing changes to the flights and that work was being done to resolve this “as soon as possible”.
The broadcaster also announced the cancellation of some flights, such as the flight Chen and Mei were supposed to take to travel to Milan, a couple from Shanghai who have been traveling through Europe since the beginning of this month.
“They told us that the flight was cancelled and little else, that we should go to the information point and they will tell us,” they explained with a certain resignation. “We were not yet aware of the computer problem, but it seemed to us that something was wrong when we saw that there were queues.”
The flight to Berlin, which was supposed to take place at noon this afternoon, has also been cancelled. “I understand that it is not the airline's fault, but I would like to know what is going to happen. Nobody tells us anything,” said a passenger who was supposed to take this plane.
Aena staff, spread throughout the terminal, urged passengers to go to the information point and ask how they would be transferred to another plane. Aena contacted this newspaper and assured that they were not aware of a flight from El Prat being cancelled. “Cancellations are decided by the airlines,” they explained.
Other passengers experienced flight delays and missed more information. “They told us our flight to Munich is an hour late, but the screens say it will leave on time,” complained María Palmero, 54, who had planned to travel with her husband to visit her daughter who lives in Germany.
Because tickets were issued manually, some lines gradually got smaller, and then grew again as new travelers arrived, ready to board their plane. “We heard in the taxi that there were problems, but that the flights were finally leaving,” says Paco Parés, 27, who is waiting to fly to Mallorca. “We’ve planted ourselves here and at some point we’ll definitely leave.”