Portugal: Delayed flights and queues for check-in at Lisbon airport

Lisbon: Throughout the morning, traffic began to accumulate at the entrances to Humberto Delgado Airport, in Lisbon, with travellers following airline advice to travel to Portela in advance, due to the global failure in the Microsoft system that is affecting several companies, including airlines such as Ryanair and Vueling.

At a normally very busy airport, the scene didn’t differ much from normal, at least up to the security area, if it weren’t for the warnings about delayed flights on the screens and some long queues at the check-in counters.

“They are saying that all flights are delayed, but we don’t know how long yet”, Jennifer told Lusa, in line for the Transavia check-in, trying to return home, “if she can”, after a vacation in Portugal.

Already in line at the Vueling counter, Airton was unaware that there was a global IT problem that is affecting air travel.

“I had a problem with the flight, I was checking in on the Vueling website and it wasn’t working,” he said.

Alice seemed to be luckier, about to go on holiday to Ibiza, Spain, as soon as she managed to get past the hurdle of checking her bags.

“The schedule remains the same, we have already paid attention to the boards. We checked in yesterday [Thursday], we weren’t going to guess this situation, but we checked in online, let’s hope everything goes well” said Alice.

On the bus that connects the two airport terminals, Rafael Pocai and his girlfriend carefully read the information for refund requests, after being grounded due to an ‘overbooking’ problem (selling more tickets than there are seats on the plane) on a Ryanair flight to Milan, Italy.

“They said they don’t have a system to issue the ‘voucher’, so I have to ask for reimbursement for the expenses I will incur,” he explained.

According to a clarification sent to Lusa, Microsoft is working to resolve constraints with customers, one relating to Azure and the other related to CrowdStrike, which are affecting companies and airlines and telecommunications companies around the world.