Porter Airlines is slowly returning to normal, with all flights scheduled for Friday before 3 p.m. cancelled or delayed due to the outage affecting Microsoft services. Flight rescheduling for affected travelers is expected to begin as soon as the airline’s website is back online.
In the Porter Airlines departures section of Montreal-Trudeau Airport, travellers sit on the floor, tired. Some have been at the airport for more than seven hours.
Met by The dutyMichelle Zarharek and Maxwell Nervinverg, an American couple who came to spend their vacation in Quebec, saw their connecting flight to Toronto delayed. However, they have to return to Chicago for work. “ “We have to go to work tomorrow, so we’re starting to think about renting a car, but it’s expensive,” says M.me Zarharek, who was trying as best he could to keep his spirits up despite the situation.
Other travellers were discouraged. Chery Beaufils arrived at Porter Terminal in the early hours of the morning when he learned his flight would be delayed. He was scheduled to leave for Calgary on Friday at 7:15 a.m., but his connecting flight to Toronto was ultimately cancelled. “It’s really disheartening. The flight was supposed to leave at noon, but the network wasn’t restored,” he said.
Chantal Légère was also scheduled to fly to Toronto, then to Moncton, with her two children, aged 2 and 11. At 8 a.m., Porter Airlines employees told her that the flight would leave at noon. It was approaching noon and flights still hadn’t resumed.
“We can’t complain, we understand that [les employés] do what they can. “It’s out of their control,” the mother said.
Her children were starting to get tired from the long wait. Her youngest is sitting in a wheelchair that employees have lent her. Her oldest son has gone to buy sandwiches, then shares a croissant with his little sister. They remain surprisingly patient, however, considering the circumstances.
Mme Légère is still hopeful that her connecting flight will not be cancelled. According to the latest information, the departure has been postponed to 3 p.m., but if it is cancelled, the mother is already thinking about taking the train. “I hope we get a refund,” she says, “that way, it will cover the cost of the train tickets.”
At the moment, the systems are still affected and do not allow the company to reschedule the cancelled flights. In addition, the rescheduling process will take “some time”, according to information available, at the time of writing, on a temporary web page that replaces the site Porter Airlines. The airline also does not rule out the possibility of canceling and delaying further flights, “while the network recovers.”
Passengers whose plans have to be cancelled because of the system problem will be given a full refund, the airline promises. “As soon as [la version normale du] website will be live, refund requests can be made,” Porter Airlines said.
No breakdown at YUL
“It was mainly the systems of carriers on the American side that were affected, including Delta, American Airlines and United Airlines,” said Eric Forest, communications advisor for Montreal-Trudeau Airport. In fact, the computer systems at Montreal’s airport were not affected by the outage.
However, passengers who had flights to U.S. destinations early this morning were unable to be processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Service has been restored and is gradually resuming.