WestJet warns of days of flight disruptions ahead after system-wide outage

WestJetis warning of days of delays to come, afterasystem-wideoutage hit the airline on Saturday.

The airline cancelled morethan 200 flights throughout the weekend, whileother flightsfaced significant delays.

In a statement Sunday afternoon, WestJet's chief operating officerDiederik Pen said although the airline'ssystems were back online, theyremained unstable and disruptions were ongoing.

"Further delays and cancellations in the coming days will be required, as we work diligently to recover our operations," he said.

Pen saidthe outage stemmed from a cooling issue in WestJet's primary data centre, and the airline had to rely onbackup options and manual processes until its systems were restored.

He alsoconceded WestJet's communicationwith travellers was lacking throughout the incident.

"We understand we let our guests down," he said, promising a review of the incident.

Travellers were still facinglong call wait times to reach WestJet's contact centre, and Pen appealed to customers not to call unless their flight was within 72 hours.

Earlier, WestJetsaidits contact centre wasunable to accessguest reservations due to the outage.

Travellers should checkWestJet's website or app for updated travel times.They will receive emails from the airline about rebooking options.

Travel plans on ice

Daren and Lisa St. Pierre were hoping to fly to Las Vegas on Sunday. The couple from Lorette, Man., planned the trip with their daughter to celebrate Daren's 55th birthday on Tuesday.

While their 24-year-old daughter has already left for Vegas, Daren and Lisa remained at the Winnipeg airport on Sunday. They were told in an emailSunday morning that their flight from Toronto to Vegas was cancelled, but not given a reason, said Lisa.

"I wanted to cry," she told CBC on Sunday. The couple both phoned WestJet in the morning and were on hold for four hours, she said, before eventually getting through to an agent.

They were told they could fly together to Vegas and arrive on Nov.8, or fly separately to Edmonton and Vancouver, where they could catch connecting flights to Vegas sooner.

They decided to try to catch the separate flights.

"Hopefully we make it, because she said they can't even guarantee we'll still make it," Lisa said.