A “nameless legend” spread “delicious joy” during major delays at Auckland Airport yesterday – and now, the search is on to find out who that person was.
Yesterday morning, an external tech issue led to huge queues for check-in at Auckland Airport’s international terminal. Congestion lasted for hours.
Amid the disruption, a “Kiwi hero” shared a “big feed” of KFC with other stranded travellers, Air New Zealand said in a statement.
The airline’s Grabaseat team was now searching for that mystery person, to reward them.
“To honour this hero’s extra tasty act of kindness, Grabaseat and KFC are offering up a special gift,” the statement said.
“They’re offering the generous Good Samaritan the opportunity to grab domestic flights to any KFC branch of their choice in Aotearoa.
“KFC is also adding a $500 KFC voucher to the mix to give the unsung hero the opportunity to enjoy some of the Colonel’s best too.”
Anyone who could help identify “this mystery chicken champion” was urged to “come forward so they can be properly celebrated”.
Fault from an ‘external network’ — AIAL says
Auckland Airport said it worked with external network providers to establish the cause of the fault that caused delays for travellers at the international terminal.
“Auckland Airport’s on-precinct fibre network plugs into a communications switch which connects to several external network providers, enabling network services to various businesses operating at Auckland Airport.
“Through a process of elimination, our technology team was able to isolate that the fault had occurred in the domain of one of the network providers, likely originating from one of their own customers.
“This meant the communications switch stopped working, cutting internet access to all of the customers operating from that device. This impacted a number of businesses operating at Auckland Airport, including a global airline technology provider that supports the international check-in system.
“With the help and collaboration of two external network providers, we managed to disable the network connection. We were able to then change to a different internet provider, which brought everything back online.”