Yahoo Finance Dozens of Aer Lingus flights cancelled after IT problems
Irish airline Aer Lingus has cancelled more than 30 flights after an IT outage left it unable to check-in passengers or record who had boarded its flights.
Passengers booked to fly today were urged not to turn up to Dublin Airport. Those affected will be rebooked on alternative flights or refunded.
The outage caused the cancellation of all Aer Lingus flights operating to and from Dublin Airport from 2pm on Saturday, leaving thousands stranded.
Destinations affected included London Heathrow, Frankfurt, Rome and other destinations on the continent. Of the 33 flights cancelled, 11 were supposed to depart from or arrive in the UK.
“Due to a major incident with a network provider, our cloud-based systems enabling check-in, boarding and our website are currently unavailable,” said the carrier, which is owned by the same parent company as British Airways, IAG.
“All flights originally scheduled to depart from Dublin Airport for European and United Kingdom destinations from 2pm onwards today have had to be cancelled,”
British Airways flights were operating as normal on Saturday.
Aer Lingus’ problems began at 9am, according to Irish broadcaster RTE. It reported that “thousands of people” were left queuing outside Dublin airport’s terminal buildings as staff resorted to using pens and paper for checking-in passengers as they arrived.
The Irish airline blamed a British company for the wave of cancellations, saying a supplier in charge of its connection to a cloud-based IT system had encountered problems.
“A UK network provider servicing the cloud-based system has experienced a major break in connectivity impacting both primary and secondary connectivity,” said Aer Lingus.
“At this time the provider has not been able to give Aer Lingus an estimate of the time when the break in connectivity will be restored.”
Aer Lingus did not respond to the Telegraph’s request for further comment.
Earlier this year industry analysts warned that IAG, the airline’s Spanish-headquartered parent company, was at risk of being broken up thanks to European Union corporate ownership rules.
British Airways is the largest company owned by IAG. Its stablemates include Aer Lingus along with Spain-based Iberia, Vueling, and low-cost long haul carrier Level.
