DUBLIN (Reuters) -Aer Lingus cancelled almost all of its afternoon flights to and from Dublin airport on Saturday as connection problems in its reservation systems disrupted check-in and boarding processes, the airline said.
The Irish carrier, owned by London-listed IAG, said “a major incident with a network provider” meant it could not access its cloud-based systems, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded outside the country’s main airport.
“This is causing severe disruption to Aer Lingus services today,” the company said in a statement, adding its provider had not been able to give an estimate on when the connectivity would be restored.
The airline cancelled 33 flights between Dublin and other European and UK destinations. The only exceptions in its schedule from 1300 GMT onwards were flights from Portugal and Spain, which it said planned to operate, albeit with delays.
Delayed flights originally scheduled to depart Dublin before 1300 GMT remained at risk of cancellation, it added. It hoped to operate some of the them through manual processing.
Flights to and from its other Irish bases in Cork, Shannon and Belfast also faced delays and the risk of short-notice cancellations.
Dublin airport earlier flagged https://twitter.com/DublinAirport/status/1568544536980324353?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet the IT issues facing Aer Lingus, saying other airlines were not impacted.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin in Dublin and Muvija M in LondonEditing by Helen Popper and Mark Potter)