Airways Blames Service Providers for Domain Expiration — South African
SAA plays the blame game.
South African Airways (SAA) is blaming service providers for letting its domain name expire, causing a web site outtage. When the domain name expired, Network Solutions followed its standard practice of changing the DNS and sending visitors to a landing page.
In a note from SAA acting CEO Chris Smyth on the firm’s web site, Smyth writes:
…This outage was not as a result of any oversight by SAA or its personnel, nor was this due to cyber attacks.
The problem was a direct result of service providers not meeting their obligations and SAA will be taking further action in this regard. Unfortunately SAA did not receive any pre-warning of the pending suspension but within hours of the problem being identified, the SAA IT personnel were able to address the problem ensuring minimal disruptions to our clients.
Smyth could be correct, if indeed the job of renewing its domain name was outsourced to, say, an IT firm, or if it had some sort of autorenewal contract with Network Solutions. That appears it may be the case. The contact email on FlySAA.com’s whois record was for ISP In The Net Technologies. It’s possible that ITNT dropped the ball. But it also makes domain name registrar Network Solutions look bad. So FlySAA ought to probably come out and say who made the mistake, rather than a general reference to a service provider.
