WestJet warns of "residual disruptions" after more than 200 flight cancellations
Canada’s second-largest airline WestJet suffered a major service outage over the weekend, but it is now stable again and ready to attend to customers. Well, sort of.
On Saturday, after a slew of complaints across social media, WestJet acknowledged the service outage, saying that it was “aware of a system-wide outage impacting operations.”
According to the airline, at the time, the impact of this service outage was limited to just one flight cancellation. Unfortunately, this number would soon bloat to more than 200, along with widespread delays.
While the impact has been limited to only 1 cancellation, we are experiencing a number of delays across our network, and our contact center is unable to access guest reservations at this time. We are working to get systems back up and anticipate service will be restored shortly. https://t.co/7uDv21VVlD
— WestJet (@WestJet) November 5, 2022
The carrier’s contact centre was unable to access guest reservations for an extended period, and tech teams were hard at work to restore all systems.
On Sunday, WestJet COO Diederik Pen wrote a letter to guests admitting that the “severe disruption” had resulted in more than 200 flight cancellations across WestJet’s network and significant delays throughout Saturday and Sunday.
Pen said the issue began due to a cooling issue at the airline’s primary data centre. He apologized to guests on behalf of the entire WestJet team. He added that although the network was stable, residual disruptions could still be expected.
All systems are now online and stable. We unfortunately anticipate further disruptions as we work to recover from the system-wide outage. We are sincerely sorry for the significant inconvenience.
— WestJet (@WestJet) November 6, 2022
The response to Pen’s letter has been a mixed one. While many guests appear to empathize, saying that it’s understandable that things can go awry in the airline business, they are still angry with a lack of timely and open communication from WestJet.
What amazes me about this is that @WestJet didn’t have a disaster recovery backup site which could have taken over when their primary data centre was having issues. This Is unheard of for such a large company. I work in IT and every company has a disaster recovery plan.
— DLT (@xeno611026) November 6, 2022
Diederick I get that things like this happen. What is appalling is the lack of information being communicated and the lack of people at YYC (your home base) around to help get answers. Your companies lack of communication and planning today makes Air Canada look good. Thats hard
— Warren Clunie (@WarrenClunie) November 6, 2022
What are your thoughts?
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