Khalid Al-Sulaiman

Okaz

The Passports Department of King Khalid International Airport welcomed travelers on the first day of Eid by making them wait for long hours in line due to a technical glitch in the communications and information technology network. The passport officers had to finalize the exit procedures manually instead through computers.



Of course, this was the last thing travelers were expecting on the first day of Eid. So many people were waiting in the lines and many of them had connecting flights in other countries but could not catch them. It was complete chaos and everyone was feeling tense and furious at the situation.



How could a system encounter a technical glitch at an international airport? Nothing can justify such glitch. I have been to many countries around the world and gone through many international airports and have not seen such a thing happen. Any international airport should have a contingency plan to deal with any collapse or glitches in the system.



Therefore, the Passports Department should have had such a plan in place to operate its systems instead of relying on one source to provide communications and information technology services. The Saudi Telecom Company said in a statement earlier that all its connecting links and circuits were working fine and did not have any glitches, which means that the problem lies in the department's systems.



Such a technical glitch can be tolerated by people who taking the causeway when traveling in their cars to Bahrain. They can wait in their cars until the problem is fixed. But it is not acceptable in an international airport because travelers have connecting flights at other international airports and any delay is unacceptable.