China's aviation industry must ensure the safety of its information system after a computer failure caused a series of check-in service breakdowns in major airports, an expert has warned.

The failure occurred at 1:32 p.m. on October 10 at the host computer of the airports' unified departure control system and led to check-in collapses in major airports in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

A unified information system was cheaper and more convenient for the airline industry, but over-centralized information management was also risky, said Xu Guangjian, vice dean of the School of Public Administration at the Renmin University.

"The more automated the information system is, the riskier it will be," said Xu.

The breakdown forced the Beijing Capital International Airport to postpone 33 flights, delaying passengers for less than an hour. Flights were also put back in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

The airports enacted contingency plans, manually checking in passengers or using back-up systems before the system resumed at 2:16 p.m..

The key information system in managing boarding procedures, the departure control system is run by TravelSky Technology Limited (TravelSky), the sole provider of information technology for almost all the airlines and more than 130 airports in China since 1988.

A similar incident resulted in the breakdown of the departure control system in January, affecting airports in cities like Chengdu, Shanghai and Beijing.

Xu urged the aviation industry to set up a guarantee system to deal with computer failures rapidly and prevent other risks from hackers and computer viruses.

He said TravelSky should provide back-up systems and develop contingency plans, as its system security concerned the operation of all domestic airports and airlines.

An exception was Spring Airlines, China's first low-cost private carrier, which launched its own reservation system last July and departure control system last October.

It was supported by the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China, with director Yang Yuanyuan expressing the hopet hat Spring Airlines would break TravelSky's monopoly, said Wang Zhenghua, chairman of Spring Airlines.

However, the Shanghai-based China Business News reported that most airports were unwilling to accept the new systems for fear of affecting their long-term cooperation with the TravelSky or for concerns over the compatibility of different systems in operation.

An source with TravelSky said the company would draw lessons from the breakdown and improve its back-up system.

Serving more than 500,000 passengers a day, the TravelSky system ranks among the world's five largest passenger reservation and departure information systems in terms of scale.