It was a frustrating Thursday morning for some travellers in Canada and beyond who took WestJet airlines.
Many took to social media to express their concern after what appeared to be a technical issue when it came to printing out boarding passes and luggage tags.
Calgarian Marina Clark was one of those people trying to find out what the holdup was on Twitter. Clark told Global News she arrived at the Calgary International Airport around 4:30 a.m. — well ahead of her planned trip to Victoria — when she noticed the lines starting to grow.
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“Somebody came and kind of yelled to all the people waiting that the systems were down and they couldn’t check us in and couldn’t give us our baggage tag. (Luckily) I got mine printed (ahead of time),” Clark said.
“Huge lineups out to the doors — massive — like Christmas time massive.”
Though the wait through security was at a normal level, according to Clark, she said the second set of lines began at gates as the airlines announced the pilot couldn’t access the flight plan because of the system being down.
“There were people here waiting in the airport who had been on cancelled Air Canada flights and for such a short flight, I kind of was like, should I have driven instead of flown?”
Clark said she eventually got on the plane after the pilot was able to get connected to the flight path, and explained the flight crew had to manually check everyone in.
“Cannot imagine (if I was) on a larger plane,” she joked.
WestJet responds
In a written statement to Global News, a spokesperson said the airline was experiencing an “infrastructure outage” that was impacting various areas of their customers’ travel experience.
“Currently impacting WestJet’s airport check-in, flight planning and payment services on westjet.com and continues to intermittently impact operations,” the company stated.
“We are working to restore service and encourage guests to arrive early and check their flight status due to delays with the check-in process at the airport.”
The company went on to say real-time updates would be found on its website.
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