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| Passengers crowd Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, Tuesday. The airport's baggage-handling system broke down Sunday, causing luggage and flight delays. / Yonhap |
By Chung Ah-young
Incheon International Airport is drawing criticism for causing inconvenience to passengers for a couple of days due to the failure of its baggage-handling system.
The Incheon International Airport Corp. (IIAC) said Tuesday that the system failed Sunday, causing delays to 169 flights and the blockage of 5,200 pieces of passengers' luggage for several hours.
Some airplanes left the airport that day without carrying their passengers' luggage. The airport belatedly sent the baggage to their destinations through Monday evening.
The corporation said that the number of passengers who traveled through the airport reached 176,432 on the day of the malfunction, the largest number since the airport's opening.
"The large number of passengers contributed to the baggage-handling problem, along with a lack of staff who deal with the luggage," an IIAC official said.
The baggage-handling system can deal with up to 12,600 pieces of luggage per hour during peak time. On Sunday, only 7,500 pieces were processed through the system, far below its maximum capacity.
The airport said that it had a larger-than-usual number of poorly wrapped packages such as boxes and plastic bags, leading to classification errors.
"In the case of such packages, it is hard for the classification system to sort them, so our staff usually check and send them in the right direction on the conveyor belt lines. But on that day, we didn't have enough people there," he said.
The Airline Operations Committee (AOC) consisting of 67 airlines operating at Incheon may seek compensation for damages from the delays, if customers want to file a suit.
The IIAC said that it will brace for more passengers who are expected to travel through the airport during the Lunar New Year holiday, which falls on Feb. 8.
"We will deploy additional personnel for baggage-handling on peak travel days and will not repeat this again," the official said. "We will collaborate closely with airlines and handling companies and make contingency plans."
The airport has a reputation as one of the world's best, with strong evaluations for its services including baggage claim services.
But this large-scale system failure has tarnished the airport which topped the global ranking for Airport Service Quality in a survey conducted by the Airports Council International in 2014 for the 10th year in a row.
To cope with rising passenger numbers, the corporation is now building its second terminal, scheduled for completion by 2017. When the terminal is completed, the airport is expected to accommodate up to 62 million passengers a year.
Also, the leadership vacuum at the IIAC has been blamed for this situation, causing lax management. Park Wan-su who served as IIAC CEO resigned after 14 months to run in the general election in April on the ruling Saenuri Party ticket in a Changwon-Uichang constituency in South Gyeongsang Province.
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