Gatwick Airport: Aer Lingus cancels all flights to and from Europe

There is huge disruption for the international airline following a ‘major incident’ with a network provider, a spokesperson said, with all flights to and from European airports affected — including Gatwick Airport.

Aer Lingus staff are said to be working ‘intensively’ with partners to resolve the issues ‘as soon as possible’.

Communication with customers has been massively affected by the incident, and customers affected will be able to change their travel plans free-of-charge.

In a statement this afternoon (Saturday, September 10), a spokesperson for the company said: “Due to a major incident with a network provider, our cloud-based systems enabling check-in, boarding and our website are currently unavailable.

“A UK network provider servicing the cloud-based system has experienced a major break in connectivity impacting both primary and secondary connectivity. At this time the provider has not been able to give Aer Lingus an estimate of the time when the break in connectivity will be restored.

“Unfortunately, this is causing severe disruption to Aer Lingus services today. Consequently, all flights originally scheduled to depart from Dublin Airport for European and United Kingdom destinations from 2.00pm onwards today have had to be cancelled.

“As we are currently unable to communicate directly with customers, we are asking customers booked to travel on those flights not to come to Dublin Airport.

“We sincerely apologise to all customers impacted by today’s disruption and cancellations.

“Any customer impacted by today’s disruptions will be able to change their travel plans, free of charge either through our call centre or social media channels. We will advise customers when IT systems are restored and this change option is fully available to our customers.

“As soon as systems are restored our teams will work to re-accommodate those impacted as efficiently as possible, and share information regarding customers’ rights and the airlines’ obligations under Regulation (EC) 261/2004.

“We are working intensively with our system partners and their network partners to resolve the connection issues as soon as possible.”