Websites grounded over terror alert
Airport websites struggled to cope with extra hits from concerned travellers, according to research by Keynote Systems.
Keynote Systems monitored the sites on August 10 from 10am-2pm and found:
– Luton airport (www.london-luton.co.uk) was only available for 9.09% of this period and in the times that it was available the site took on average 54.22 seconds to load
– Belfast airport (www.belfastairport.com) was not available 85.11% of the monitored period; meaning travellers could not access the site for much of the morning
– Birmingham International (www.bhamintlairport.com) and Cardiff (www.cardiffairport.com) were also performing poorly with 38.3% and 21.74% availability respectively
– Manchester (www.manchesterairport.co.uk) faired better with 86.96% availability, but on average a massive 22.78 second load time.
BAA.com, which services the major airports including Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick, was unavailable for extended periods or was extremely slow, sometimes taking up to 45 seconds to load
Keynote said the level of service provided by airport sites is a concern, when so many people are reliant on the Internet as a major source of information.
Haran Sold, VP and managing director, EMEA, said: “Airport websites are often the first port of call in a crisis situation such as this. In playing this vital role, being consistently available and easy to access is critical.
“While peaks in demand such as this are impossible to predict in advance, it is essential that organisations are prepared for such eventualities.
“Websites that fail to prepare and struggle to provide information in a timely manner are only making an already tense situation harder to resolve.”
Keynote noted that media sites including the BBC, Sky news and CNN responded well to events, with no disruption to services or divergence from normal average loading times.
By Bev Fearis
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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