Follow us on Telegram for the latest updates: https://t.me/mothershipsg

The thousands of travellers stuck in long queues on Mar. 31, 2023 at Changi Airport, as well as Woodlands and Tuas checkpoints was due to a system overload during a pre-scheduled trial.

Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim said in Parliament on Apr. 21, 2023, that the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) was conducting a pre-scheduled trial needed to upgrade the Multi-Modal Biometrics System (MMBS).

But due to a system overload that was more severe than anticipated, a total of 85,000 air and land passengers were affected.

A total of 21 out of 30,000 passengers on 113 departure and 111 arrival flights missed their flights.

Another 55,000 travellers at the two land checkpoints at Woodlands and Tuas were also affected.

What happened

Mothership previously reported that on Mar. 31, 2023, at around noon, many people took to social media to complain about long snaking queues at Changi Airport.

A Mothership reader said the automated immigration gates were down, and people could only go through manual immigration clearance.

At the same time, people reported on social media that immigration system problems resulted in long queues at Tuas & Woodlands Checkpoints.

ICA informed the public that they were experiencing "system slowness" at some clearance checkpoints and advised travellers to postpone non-essential trips.

Trial was during off-peak hours

Faishal explained that the trial scheduled on Mar. 31 was done during off-peak hours from 10am to 2pm.

He said vendors were on standby, and the plan was to recover the system within 30 minutes if the trial did not go well.

At 10:40am, the trial caused the storage systems to overload, and the process was "aborted immediately".

The extent of the overload was more severe than anticipated, and the vendors had to work with their global support team to diagnose and reboot the servers.

The problem affected the automated clearance lanes at all departure halls in Changi Airport and specific automated lanes at Woodlands and Tuas checkpoints.

The rest of the automated lanes at Woodlands and Tuas checkpoints and sea checkpoints were unaffected.

The recovery process took about four-and-a-half hours, and the MMBS recovered at 3pm.

ICA recalled off-duty officers to help work the manual immigration counters and perform crowd control.

An earlier trial conducted on Mar. 15 from 1:30am to 3:30am was successful, Faishal added.

About 85,000 people affected

Travellers experienced delays of up to 30 minutes at land checkpoints, Faishal said.

There was another one-hour delay for cars at Woodlands Checkpoint as the car arrival zone had to be converted to clear motorbikes manually.

During the disruption, about 55,000 travellers passed through Tuas and Woodlands Checkpoints.

At Changi Airport, travellers were re-directed to manual counters for immigration clearance.

21 passengers missed their flights

Changi Airport Group (CAG) also assisted ICA by deploying their staff, youth ambassadors, and office staff.

The 21 out of 30,000 passengers affected missed their flights at Terminal 4.

These passengers were subsequently offered to re-book alternative flights within a week at no extra cost.

Reviewing the approach to upgrade

Faishal added that ICA will be reviewing the approach to the upgrade in light of the incident.

ICA is also in the process of a multi-year plan, the New Clearance Concept (NCC), to transform immigration clearance across all checkpoints, making clearance more seamless and helping ICA cope with rising traveller volumes.

Under the NCC, all manual counters and automated lanes will be replaced in phases with Automated Border Clearance System gates.

These gates will allow travellers to continue using automated clearance even when the MMBS is down.

"We apologise to affected travellers for the inconvenience caused and thank them for their understanding," Faishal said.

"I will also like to thank ICA officers and CAG staff who had worked tirelessly, without complaint, to deal with the situation."

Answering a follow-up question, Faishal reassured that no data was lost or breached during the incident.

Related story

Top photo via MCI's YouTube and Mothership reader