Porter Airlines has cancelled flights until 3 p.m. Friday due to a global IT outage, leaving some travellers in Toronto with their vacation plans up in the air.
“They don’t know what’s going on,” a woman named Jennifer, whose 10 a.m. flight from Toronto Pearson International Airport to Halifax was cancelled, told CP24 Friday morning.
“We didn’t know anything coming here. We saw the crowds were lined up and seeing ‘cancelled’ up on the [departures] board,” Irene, Jennifer’s travel companion, added.
Porter, which operates flights out of Pearson and Billy Bishop Airport, explained to CP24 that they’re unable to rebook flights while their systems are offline and they’re unable to communicate with customers via email or text.
Initially, the airline said they would cancel flights until 12 p.m., but extended that timeline to 3 p.m. in an update issued Friday morning.
A number of American airlines were also affected by the outage, including United, American and Delta, resulting in a number of cancellations.
Other Canadian airlines, such as Air Canada and WestJet, were not affected by the IT incident. NAV Canada, which pilots rely on to navigate the skies, was also unaffected.
The outage was caused by a software update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike and is impacting any computer that runs Microsoft Windows. CrowdStrike the outage was not a security incident and systems are slowing coming back online.
This is a developing story. More to come.
With files from The Associated Press