System glitch forces cancellation of 75 Copa flights
PANAMA’S FLAGSHIP airline was forced to cancel 75 flights on the weekend following a failure of its technology platform.
On Sunday afternoon October 20 , the airline announced cancellation of eight flights , bringing the total since the system breakdown began on Saturday to 75 The company has asked passengers planning to fly Copa on Monday, October 21 to postpone their flights to Tuesday.
At least 10,000 people were affected and although the company indicates that it had fixed the damage, the cascade effect that caused the failure was still causing problems late Sunday with hundreds of passengers waiting to board at Tocumen International Airport reports La Prensa.
There were also delays for arriving passengers with no gates available for disembarkation.
Meanwhile and before is this scenario , the president of the board of Tocumen SA Frank De Lima wrote onn his Twitter account that the situation "at Tocumen airport is a COPA problem " and not the administration of the air terminal .
Copa Airlines said in a statement that the technological network disruption in its operations center in Panama City , was largely overcome, although some systems are were still being intermittently affected.
However, the disruption has created a significant impact on the activities of office, flight planning , crew and passenger rearrangement operations from its headquarters in Panama City .
The company says that "in order to avoid further inconvenience to our passengers , as well as to help stabilize operations and flight schedules , we request the cooperation of all travelers originating in Panama in the next 48 hours to postpone your trip , and contact our Reservation Center at 217-2672 and proceed to change yourflights to leave from Tuesday October 22 onwards”