The Department of Homeland Security computer system that checks airline passengers against terror watch lists briefly experienced service disruptions Wednesday evening that led to some delays, officials said.
Officials confirmed at 8:22 p.m. that the system was experiencing problems. A senior government official told NBC News at around 9:06 p.m. that the system was back up.
The problem caused delays at New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport, NBC New York reported.
A passenger at Boston Logan International Airport said computers were down and people were filling out green paper forms.
Electronic kiosks where passengers can fill out self-service declaration forms were down, and there were noticeably more staff at customs counters — “looks like they paged a bunch of people to come in,” passenger Jeremy Hitchcock said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said the problem was with the computers and kiosks used by passengers arriving in the United States at airports nationwide.
Challenges in a digital world… @emirates check in system crashed at JFK airport NYC. pic.twitter.com/YPWRLgSwKM
— Munesh Makhija (@muneshm) October 14, 2015
Becky Bratu
Cynthia Miller-Idriss is an author and expert on extremism.