Japan Airlines hit by cyber attack, delaying some flights

JAL says it has suspended ticket sales for all services on Thursday following incident.

Japan Airlines (JAL) has reported being hit with a cyber attack, causing delays to some flights.

The airline has been experiencing “malfunctions in systems communicating with external systems” since shortly before 7:30am local time (23:30 GMT, Wednesday), JAL said on Thursday.

JAL temporarily isolated a router that was causing the disruption shortly before 9am and is currently “checking the status of the system recovery”, the Tokyo-based airline said.

“We have identified the scope of the impact and are currently checking the status of the system recovery,” JAL said.

The airline added that there were delays to both domestic and international flights and that it had suspended ticket sales for all services scheduled for Thursday.

More than a dozen flights were delayed at several Japanese airports, but there were no mass cancellations, public broadcaster NHK reported.

All Nippon Airways, JAL’s main rival, said that it had not been affected by any cyber incidents and that services were operating as normal.

American Airlines briefly grounded all flights on Christmas Eve after experiencing a technical glitch involving its network hardware.