Airports across the Australian east coast were thrown into disarray on Monday morning as an IT glitch led to dozens of flight cancellations
Passengers at Sydney and Melbourne’s domestic airports found themselves stranded with over 40 flights cancelled unexpectedly, 21 in Sydney and 20 in Melbourne across local airlines Qantas, Virgin Australia, Jetstar, as well as international charters American Airlines and British Airways.
It is reported that a nationwide computer outage experienced on Sunday night led to a ‘domino effect’ which has now seen long lines snake through airport terminals as airlines are left to deal with passengers without flights.
Travellers are reported to have voiced their frustrations with the delays and services on social media.
@Qantas you cancelled one of my tickets due to 'system error' which means we cannot now travel. I have tried to get some response on the call centre over the last 2 months with no 'manager' calling me back. Webform unanswered too. Resorting to the Twitter team for help!
— Bern Yu (Bernard Yu) (@Bern798) July 31, 2022
It may have been quicker to drive to Canberra then wait for @qantas to get us there. Two hours late and counting. The poor staff of Qantas, the handful still left with a job that we can see anywhere in the airport, doing their very best in trying circumstances
— Kon Karapanagiotidis (@Kon__K) July 31, 2022
Cancellations add to Australian Airlines Woes
This adds to the recent disruptions experienced by Australia’s domestic airports, which have seen experienced multiple delays and cancellations due to technical issues and staff shortages and for it to“rebalance capacity and fares.”
Australian airline Qantas recently announced it was also forced to cut several flights from its schedule while hiking up the price of domestic flights due to higher fuel costs.
Travel Radar reported last Monday of similar technical issues causing delays for passengers at Sydney Airport, seeing lines of passengers spill outside the terminals.
It was also recently reported by CNN that Sydney Airport had ranked 9th in the world in a survey for most flight delays (occurring 34.2% of the time) and 6th for most cancellations, with six per cent of flights failing to leave the tarmac.
*Travel Radar attempted to reach out to airlines, including Qantas and Virgin Australia, for comment on the cancellations but were unable to reach them.
Have you been affected by today’s cancellations? Let us know in the comments!
