Aer Lingus apologises after Dublin flights to UK and Europe cancelled

Aer Lingus has apologised after it cancelled all flights from Dublin Airport to European and UK destinations on Saturday.

All Dublin-bound flights were also cancelled, except Spain and Portugal.

It comes after technical issues with the airline's check-in and boarding processes caused lengthy queues from 09:00 local time on Saturday.

The airline said a total of 51 flights were cancelled and customers affected can apply for refunds.

Earlier, Aer Lingus described it as a "major incident" and cancelled all of its Dublin flights from 14:00 local time.

No other airlines were affected, Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) confirmed.

The UK network provider behind the airline's cloud-based system had experienced a "major break" in connectivity, it said.

"We sincerely apologise to all customers impacted by today's disruption and cancellations," the carrier said in a statement.

Delays

Passengers were asked not to come to Dublin Airport due to the issues.

Staff at the airport had been attempting to check in passengers manually, which caused further delays.

"Aer Lingus seriously apologises to customers for the severe disruption caused today by the unavailability of key systems for check-in, boarding and our website," the company said.

"The system outage was caused by a break in connectivity in services from a UK network provider.

"The break in connectivity has now been restored and we are taking steps to bring all of our systems back online."

All of the airline's transatlantic flights from Dublin operated but with delays and some reduced passenger numbers "in some instances, due to security restrictions applying as a result of the systems outage".

Transatlantic flights from Shannon operated as normal, the airline said.

Hundreds of people queued outside Terminal Two at Dublin Airport while issues persisted

Some passengers were forced to wait outside the Terminal Two building while issues persisted, with queues snaking around the airport.

Aer Lingus customers elsewhere were experiencing similar issues, with queues forming in Heathrow's Terminal Two.

Aer Lingus is the national airline of the Republic of Ireland and services both short and long-haul flights from Dublin and Shannon.

The airline also flies from smaller regional airports in Ireland such as Cork, Kerry and Donegal.

Founded in 1936, it now operates from 93 airports in 24 countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and the Canary Islands.

Earlier this year, Aer Lingus cancelled several flights at Irish airports due to a spike in Covid-19 cases among staff.