Airline ground crew walks past grounded Air Canada planes as they sit on the tarmac at Pearson International Airport In Toronto on Tuesday, April 27, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
MONTREAL – Air Canada says travellers should be prepared for further flight disruptions as it works to return service to normal following a technical malfunction Thursday.
In its daily travel outlook, the carrier said that while its IT system is now stable, flights may be affected at nine of Canada’s busiest airports, including Toronto’s Pearson, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary.
Thursday’s outage led to more than 500 flights – over three quarters of its trips – to be delayed or cancelled on the day, creating what the airline says are “rollover effects” that may lead to further delays Friday.
The source of the disruption was in the system used by the airline to communicate with aircraft and monitor their performance, which Air Canada has been in the process of upgrading.
On May 25, it grounded its planes for about an hour when the system experienced a separate issue, causing delays for nearly half of Air Canada’s flights that day.
A total of 81 Air Canada flights, or 15 per cent of the airline’s scheduled load, had been delayed Friday as of 11 a.m. EDT, along with 30 cancellations, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 2, 2023.
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