The baggage-handling debacle at Incheon International Airport on Jan. 3 that led to 160 flights being delayed was caused by human error rather than a jam of outsize luggage, as the Korea Airports Corporation claimed earlier.
Airline industry insiders said such a glitch rarely occurs at international hub airports.
Investigators from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, Seoul Regional Office of Aviation, and Incheon International Airport Corporation announced Tuesday that an error occurred in a device that controls the luggage delivery belt, causing the system to jam.
The error occurred at around 7:50 a.m. on Jan. 3 and could have been easily resolved if someone had pushed the reset button. But airport staff said the error message went unnoticed for 30 minutes.
The follow-up was also flawed. In emergencies, backed-up luggage must be handled manually, but airport staff waited until 10 a.m. to decide to deploy more workers to handle the backlog.
"Airport officials failed to respond properly and seem to have made the problem worse," a ministry official said. "We will probe further to find out why it took so long to dispatch more staff."
