Aer Lingus has been forced to issue an apology to passengers after its online check-in booking management systems stopped working throughout Sunday and into Monday. The IT woes come just over a week after the Irish flag carrier suffered a major computer outage that resulted in at least 50 flights being cancelled.
In a statement, the airline said it was “aware that some customers are again experiencing issues managing their bookings and checking in online.”
“Our teams are working to resolve this as soon as possible,” the statement posted to Twitter continued. Aer Lingus reassured passengers that check-in remained available at airport counters and that flights should continue to operate as scheduled.
The airline has not yet explained the cause of the IT problems that prevented passengers from accessing check-in and booking systems for most of Sunday. Aer Lingus said the affected systems had been brought back online at around 6:00 am on Monday before admitting that they were not working just three hours later.
Last weekend, Aer Lingus blamed “severe disruption” on a system outage from a UK-based IT provider. The airline grounded 51 flights last Saturday after thousands of passengers were caught up in chaotic scenes at its base at Dublin Airport.
Aer Lingus is owned by the Madrid-based International Airlines Group (IAG) which also owns British Airways. The airline’s antiquated IT system has faced a number of outages in recent years, although replacing legacy systems has proven a difficult and protracted task.
I wonder what is going on. I’m guessing they outsourced it to a low bidder and the low bidder uses……of course cheap engineers who aren’t really that good. Look at the airlines and their frequent outages and compare them to online stores that rarely have issues. The difference is maintaining good people and having redundancy but airlines try to go cheap on everything and the passenger pays for it.
Except for bizarre situations, outages should not be occurring.