US: Outage causes major delays for travelers

Thousands of travelers at US airports faced lengthy delays on Friday due to a countrywide outage of US Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) processing systems.

CBP tweeted that there was no suspicion of malice involved. "The affected systems are coming back online and travelers are being processed. CBP will continue to monitor the incident. There is no indication the disruption was malicious in nature at this time.

Los Angeles Airport said their systems are "slowly getting back to normal" and that flights were not too severely disrupted. 

'Alternative procedures' used

Earlier on Friday, CBP had said the outage was not long term and that "officers continue to process international travelers using alternative procedures until systems are back online. Travelers at some ports of entry are experiencing longer than usual wait times."

The issue did not affect departures, however.

New York's JFK Airport said on Twitter: "CBP is experiencing a temporary outage with its processing systems at JFK Airport. Passengers are being processed manually. Delays are expected."

Meanwhile, American Airlines spokesman Ross Feinstein said the airline was "aware of the outage and are in contact with US Customs and Border Protection."

jsi/kl (Reuters, dpa www.cbp.gov)

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