Scanner failure causes chaos as EasyJet flight delayed an hour

EasyJet passengers, during their flight from Gran Canaria to Berlin on December 8th, lined up at the gate indicated on the board. When it was time to board the plane, it suddenly became apparent that there was a system failure, and passengers had to quickly move to another entrance at the terminal. About 30 Polish people were in the group.

Ironically, this did not speed things up. When airport staff began checking tickets, it turned out that… neither of the two scanners at this checkpoint was working, and an error appeared on the computer screen every time. Calls to the airport manager’s headquarters and the help of IT specialists didn’t resolve the issue.

In this situation, the helpless and slightly stressed airport staff had to implement another procedure. The distinction between passengers with priority boarding and those without was abandoned. Priority boarding was given to people with a printed paper ticket.

Those with app-based tickets had to wait longer in line.

- I bought tickets for several people, which I only had on my phone, and there was a problem because none of us had them printed - said one of the Polish passengers to the newspaper NaKanarach.pl.

In this situation, after showing the ticket on the smartphone, the staff had to manually enter the passengers' data into the computer to verify each one. If this was not possible, according to procedure, a full passenger list was then printed, and everything was checked individually.

Additionally, they also avoided checking the dimensions of the luggage to prevent the situation from escalating and to allow passengers to board the plane as quickly as possible.

However, due to the scanner failure, the flight was almost an hour delayed, departing from the airport on Gran Canaria.