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AER LINGUS SAYS that the system outage that led to mass flight cancellations was caused by a fibre optic cable being damaged by construction in the UK.
Over 50 flights were cancelled by the airline last Saturday due to “major” errors with the company’s online system, leaving Aer Lingus unable to check-in, board or access mandatory flight information for nearly 10 hours.
“For almost 10 hours on Saturday we had no access to our core operational and customer system. We couldn’t check-in, board, access mandatory flight information, access data on customer bookings or access customer contact information,” said a spokesperson for Aer Lingus.
“Key processes for our contact centre, website and digital applications were also unavailable. This meant that we had limited ability to communicate with our customers and provide the service and information we know you needed.”
The airline has said that the issue was caused by construction work in the UK damaging a fibre optic cable that provides connectivity to Aer Lingus’ systems.
“Aer Lingus has a contract with a leading cloud services provider to host the network and infrastructure behind our core operational and customer system,” added the spokesperson.
“Their internet services provider in the UK had a major failure in their network when, early on Saturday morning, unrelated construction work damaged one of the fibre optic cables which provide connection to Aer Lingus’ systems.”
The spokesperson added that a component within the airline’s back-up system failed, with the cable only being repaired at 5.30pm on Saturday.
“Both have now been fixed and measures have been put in place which should prevent an outage of this type happening again.”
The airline has since apologised to customers, with a letter from the company’s Chief Executive, Lynne Embleton, being sent to anyone who was impacted.
“Aer Lingus is very conscious of the impact this had on its customers. Staff at Aer Lingus made huge efforts on the day to try to help customers in what were very difficult circumstances, adding extra resources to rebook customers, reunite bags with customers. The company is now processing refunds as quickly as we can,” added the spokesperson.
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So the primary fibre connection failed, and “a component within the airline’s back-up system failed”. This sounds like some very poor engineering. The fact that both failed at the same time suggests to me they’re tightly coupled, and the failover connection isn’t a real backup system at all
@Conor Farrell: – “Aer Lingus has a contract with a leading cloud services provider to host the network and infrastructure behind our core operational and customer system”
So apparently in this scenario if the fibre connection is down, then so is the cloud service, and seemingly the back-up system is dependent on the cloud service.
That’s indeed not exactly solid and foolproof engineering.
@Mick Tobin: Exactly. I’d be curious to know who the “leading cloud services provider” is because the networking layout here is bad. Even if you use one cloud provider (Amazon, Google, whoever), you need two (or more!) dedicated and isolated routes to their infrastructure for high availability. It’s cloud engineering 101.
@Conor Farrell: one would expect that there would be diverse fibre optic paths, if not multiple for any large provider. Mind boggles.
@Conor Farrell:
Don’t sound ‘Leading’
@Conor Farrell: single point of failure in reality
Where exactly is aerlingus due diligence on their service providers, and why exactly do they not have a separate company operating their primary and secondary network. Total failure on their behalf and they’re just trying to pass the buck.
@Philip Cullen: Telecom cables go from A to B and last I checked Aer Lingus was not a Telecoms company!!
@Chris Gaffney: That comment has absolutely nothing to do with anything written above!
Instead it’s about risk management and ensuing your primary and secondary networks are managed sepately to ensure continuity of service if either fails. However if you’re not in the industry you may not be aware of this. Your ISP most definitely is aware of such issues.
@Chris Gaffney: They are not a telecoms company but for such an important service, redundancy should have been planned.
Refunds are surely the least that passengers can expect?
Holidays are sooo relaxing these day! Not.
You’d have thought the back up system would be in a different region…
Horrible company, stuck in the airport for hours on Saturday, nearly ready to board then the flight was cancelled, granted things can happen but no one in Aer Lingus had the ability to communicate, no staff to be seen, the only information we got was from social media and other passengers, their customer service is non existent
@Damo: I was caught in Paris CDG 2- i didn’t mind. However absolutely no communication from EI all day!
Just shows Uk sneezed and we get a cold
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