Aer Lingus may seek redress from IT company over systems failure that hit over 30,000 passengers

Aer Lingus is in discussions with multinational Kyndryl over a systems failure that hit more than 30,000 of the airline’s passengers last month. Damage to a fibre optic cable combined with the failure of its IT contractor’s backup knocked out the carrier’s passenger processing system on Saturday, September 10th, stranding or delaying 32,000 people. Aer Lingus corporate affairs chief Donal Moriarty told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport that the company was in talks with the IT provider, Kyndryl, over issues from the system failure. “We are engaging with the provider on the consequences for both ourselves and our customers from the outage,” he said. He was responding to committee member, Fine Gael Senator Jerry Buttimer, who asked if the issue was likely to go to court, and argued that the IT provider should also be held accountable for the problem that affected Aer Lingus passengers. Aer Lingus chief customer officer Susanne Carberry told the committee that almost 7,500 customers subsequently sought compensation from the airline. “We have successfully processed 91% of them,” she added.<br/>