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It appears that state-owned airline, SA Airways, forgot to renew its Internet domain, flysaa.com. The domain was suspended at the weekend pending payment by the national carrier.
It was not immediately clear how long the website was offline, but Web users visiting flysaa.com on Sunday morning were greeted with a message from domain registration company Network Solutions stating that “flysaa.com expired on 17 January 2010 and is pending renewal or deletion”.
The service appeared to have been restored by midday on Sunday, though many Web users were still saying they could not access the site. This could mean that the service was back online, but the domain name system servers, which map human-readable Web addresses to machine-readable Internet Protocol numbers, still needed to refresh.
Flysaa.com on Sunday morning (click for full-size image)
Investigation by TechCentral on Sunday suggested SAA wasn’t directly to blame for the downtime. Rather, a company called In The Net Technologies, based in Randpark Ridge, north-west of Johannesburg, appeared to be responsible for maintaining the flysaa.com domain on the airline’s behalf.
Flysaa.com, with its online ticketing system, is integral to the carrier’s business. The website downtime could have cost it millions of rand in lost revenue.
According to Arthur Goldstuck, MD of research firm World Wide Worx, flysaa.com is probably the country’s biggest e-commerce website. “SAA carries about 6,5m passengers a year, with an average ticket price of about R2 000,” he said. “A conservative estimate suggests at least 25% of these tickets are booked online, which would amount to around 2,1m tickets at an average of R2 000 each, amounting to R4,2bn/year, or roughly R11,5m a day (at least). That’s a fairly expensive day for a [domain renewal] that should only have cost around US$10.”
SAA spokesman Vimla Maistry declined to comment and said the airline was drafting a statement to explain the downtime on the website. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral
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Muppets.
The circus has arrived in town.
It’s easy to blame SAA for stuff like this, but at worst it chose wrong when selecting an internet company. That happens, even to competent private companies.
In The Net Technologies, however, might be looking at serious damages. Internet Solutions had better hurry up and sue over ITNT’s “Vision Statement”, which is: “Our vision is to be recognized as the industry leader in innovative customer focused, Internet Solutions.” Capitals, plural, the works; the only thing missing is the trademark symbol.
Surprised someone didn’t take it. There are commercial entities out there who’s sole purpose is to wait until a domain you require expires and buy it. Within minutes.
Their website was only slightly less usable whilst it was offline.
> … or roughly R11,5m a day (at least). That’s a fairly expensive day for a [domain renewal] that should only have cost around US$10.”
I hope Arthur isn’t suggesting they lost >R10mil, if so I’ll take every report I see from him with a bag of salt. Let’s get real here – when I checked this at midday it was reachable from all networks but SAIX. Plus it was sunday, usually a day of low internet usage. The day before payday; a day of low ecommerce. Plus I’d imagine a large percentage, if not the majority of users would have tried again later in the day – I know I would have. It probably couldn’t have happened at a better time for SAA. This was a long way from being a catastrophe. It was a little embarassing for SAA and not even their fault, and that’s about it.
There’s going to be a network admin at ITNT getting a formal warning 1st thing on monday, that’s for sure!
Hi Brett, the domain’s staus was ‘pending deletion’ – one cannot register it then. Otherwise I am sure you’re right, someone would have taken it.
HC
This is factually incorrect, another classic case where reporters dont get all the facts and jump to improper conclusions. In The Net Technologies is not responsible for this situation!
@Grant: We pointed out that the domain records state that ITNT is responsible for managing the domain. But perhaps you’d like to explain who is to blame, then, and why ITNT is listed as managing the domain in the records
ITNT does not administer this domain, ITNT is just the technical contact.
Global One Business Solutions (Pty) Ltd is responsible for the administration of this domain; they have the responsibility to renew the domain and pay for the domain. All correspondance for the renewal of the domain was sent to there email address.