(Toronto) Travelers faced long lines and canceled flights on Sunday when a widespread outage affected the computer system of airline WestJet.
Updated yesterday at 8:48 p.m.
The Calgary-based company said it has resolved Saturday’s outage, which affected its entire network, but warned that further disruptions are expected in the coming days.
Its chief operating officer, Diederik Pen, issued a press release on Sunday in which he said the outage was caused by a “cooling problem” in its main data center and that more than 200 flights had to be cancelled.
Unfortunately, due to the scale of the impact on the network, we continue to see disruptions. Further delays and cancellations will be required in the coming days as we work to resume operations.
WestJet Chief Operating Officer Diederik Pen
He pointed out that all systems are back online, but the carrier is still experiencing “some instability.”
“If WestJet says things are back to normal, it’s just a lie,” said Andrew Moreau, a passenger reached by phone from Calgary International Airport.
Mr. Moreau, from Winnipeg, said he wanted to fly to Las Vegas on Saturday with two other people when they were told at the gate that their flight had been canceled.
After six hours in the airport trying to book another flight, they were informed that nothing was available for Las Vegas. So they agreed that they would fly to San Francisco and drive the rest of the way.
But Mr. Moreau added that this flight to San Francisco, scheduled for Sunday, was also canceled at the last minute. He and his companions therefore decided to abandon their trip and booked a return flight to Winnipeg.
“It’s happened to almost everyone, from what we’ve seen,” lamented Mr. Moreau.
WestJet said the outage prevented its contact center from accessing customer reservations. The company also apologized to customers for the inconvenience.
In his statement, Mr. Pen also asked passengers whose travel plans were not “imminent” to wait 72 hours before their flight before contacting the company to ensure that staff are able to prioritize calls.
Many passengers expressed their frustration on social media about their difficulty obtaining information from WestJet, long queues and their inability to reach airline staff by phone.