Japanese flag carrier's systems back to normal after cyberattack

Japan Airlines (JAL) said that its systems are now operational following a cyberattack on Thursday that led to significant delays in both domestic and international flights.

"We have identified the cause and scope of the malfunction, and the system has been restored," said the airline, Japan's second biggest after All Nippon Airways (ANA).

The airline confirmed on social media that the "large data attack" did not compromise customer information or safety.

Japanese media sources suggested that the incident could have been a "Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS)" attack, which targets and disrupts online services.

Ticket sales for domestic and international flights departing on Thursday were suspended during the incident but have now resumed, JAL said.

Although the cyberattack did not cause major disruption, the airline earlier said that 24 domestic flights had been delayed by more than half an hour.

Problems with the carrier's baggage check-in system caused delays at several Japanese airports, local media said.

JAL shares fell as much as 2.5% in morning trade after the news emerged, before recovering. Its stocks were down 0.2% in the afternoon.

Japanese airline blames human error

Separately, a transport ministry committee tasked with probing a fatal January 2024 collision involving a JAL passenger jet released an interim report on Wednesday blaming human error for the incident that killed five people.

The collision at Tokyo's Haneda Airport was with a coast guard plane carrying six crew members — of whom five were killed — that was on a mission to deliver relief supplies to a quake-hit central region of Japan.

According to the report, the smaller plane's pilot mistook an air traffic control officer's instructions to mean authorisation had been given to enter the runway.

The captain was also "in a hurry" at the time because the coast guard plane's departure was 40 minutes behind schedule, the report said.

The traffic controller failed to notice the plane had intruded onto the runway, oblivious even to an alarm system warning against its presence.

All 379 people on board the JAL Airbus escaped just before the aircraft was engulfed in flames.

Japan Airlines is just the latest Japanese firm to be hit by a cyberattack.

The country's space agency JAXA was targeted in 2023, although no sensitive information about rockets or satellites was accessed.

The same year one of Japan's busiest ports was hit by a ransomware attack blamed on the Russia-based Lockbit group.

In 2022, a cyberattack at a Japanese automotive manufacturer's supplier forced the top-selling automaker to halt operations at domestic plants.

And more recently, the popular Japanese video-sharing website Niconico came under a large cyberattack in June.