The Sunwing Airlines technical glitch that grounded flights and thousands of passengers this week has been attributed to a data security breach.
Posted at 12:44 p.m.
The Toronto-based airline said Wednesday it continues to manually check in passengers after server networks belonging to its third-party service provider, Airline Choice, were compromised.
The disruption left many travelers waiting at airports, mostly to sun destinations in the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America.
Sunwing said it was working with other airlines to find additional planes to help ease the delay at some airports.
Airline Choice is an Illinois-based company that provides airlines with a technology platform to streamline passenger processing, self-service and compliance process.
In an emailed statement Wednesday, Airline Choice described the breach as a “data security event” that affected a limited number of its computer systems.
“As a precaution, we have taken some systems offline to secure our environment. We also immediately launched an investigation to determine the nature and extent of the event,” the company said.
Airline Choice added that it has already begun to restore functionality to its systems and will work day and night until this is complete.
Sunwing said the server issue has impacted multiple carriers around the world.