Aer Lingus have urged any passengers booked onto flights out of Dublin Airport today to avoid coming to the airport if at all possible after major disruption.
An ongoing IT issue is causing major issues for the airline, with images surfacing on social media on Saturday morning showing hundreds of people in queues waiting to check their bags before heading off on holidays.
But the IT issue meant that any flight after 2pm was facing disruption or even cancellation.
READ MORE: Aer Lingus cancel all remaining UK and EU flights today amid 'major incident'
READ MORE: Aer Lingus passengers faced with chaotic queues as 'IT issue' prevents any check-ins
On Saturday afternoon, the airline updated passengers on what they need to do if they are currently bound for a flight that's been cancelled.
A statement from Aer Lingus 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."
They continued: "We are endeavouring to operate some flights from Dublin Airport that were originally scheduled to depart pre 2.00pm today. However, as we are relying on manual process for these flights, there remains a risk of cancellation.
"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."
The airline add that in addition:
- flights originally scheduled to depart to Dublin from Europe from 2.00pm onwards today have also had to be cancelled, with the exception of flights from Portugal and Spain (which plan to operate, albeit with delays).
- flights originally scheduled to depart to Dublin from the United Kingdom from 2.00pm onwards today have also had to be cancelled.
- flights to and from the Aer Lingus bases in Cork, Shannon and Belfast are currently planned to operate today, albeit with delays and risk of short-notice cancellations.
- Aer Lingus Regional flights (operated by Emerald Airlines) are currently planned to operate today, albeit with delays and risk of short-notice cancellations.
"We sincerely apologise to all customers impacted by today’s disruption and cancellations," the statement continues.
"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."
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