Japan Airlines on Thursday reported a cyberattack that caused delays to domestic and international flights, but later said it had found and resolved the cause.
Japan’s second-largest airline after All Nippon Airways (ANA) said 24 domestic flights were delayed by more than half an hour.
Public broadcaster NHK said problems with the airline’s baggage check-in system caused delays at several Japanese airports, but no major disturbances were reported.
“We identified and resolved the cause of the problem. We are investigating the system recovery status,” Japan Airlines (JAL) said in a post on social media platform X.
“Sales have been suspended for both domestic and international flights departing today. We apologize for any inconvenience,” the post said.
A JAL spokesperson told AFP that the company had previously been hit by a cyber attack.
Japanese media said it could be a so-called DDoS attack aimed at disrupting a website or server.
The network disruption began at 7:24 a.m. Thursday (2224 GMT Wednesday), JAL said in a statement, adding that there was no impact on the security of its operations.
Then “at 8:56 a.m., we temporarily isolated the router (a device for exchanging data between networks) that was causing the disruption,” it said.
Report on January collision
JAL shares fell 2.5% in morning trading after the news broke, then recovered slightly.
The airline is the latest Japanese company to be hit by a cyber attack.
In 2023, Japan’s space agency JAXA was targeted, although no sensitive information about rockets or satellites was found.
The same year there was a ransomware attack on one of Japan’s busiest ports, which was attributed to the Russia-based Lockbit Group.
In 2022, a cyberattack on a Toyota supplier forced the best-selling automaker to halt operations at domestic plants.
Recently, popular Japanese video-sharing website Niconico was hit by a major cyberattack in June.
Separately, a transport ministry committee tasked with investigating a fatal collision involving a JAL passenger jet in January 2024 released an interim report on Wednesday that blamed human error for the incident that killed five people. People died.
The collision at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport occurred with a coast guard plane carrying six crew members – five of whom died – which was on a mission to deliver relief supplies to Japan’s quake-hit central region.
According to the report, the pilot of the small aircraft interpreted the air traffic control officer’s instructions to mean authorization to enter the runway.
The captain was also “in a hurry” at the time as the departure of the coast guard aircraft was 40 minutes behind schedule, the report said.
The traffic controller failed to notice that the aircraft had entered the runway, oblivious even to the alarm system warning against its presence.
All 379 people on board the JAL Airbus escaped just before the plane burst into flames.