It was a victory of sorts. As a result of the cyber attack on Collins Aerospace cMUSE system last weekend, Aer Lingus was forced to use a workaround for five days to generate electronic boarding cards, bypassing the common system to connect directly with their back-end system.
Laptops were used to process boarding cards, a more cumbersome method to maintain operations. That it came through the crisis was the result of a huge contribution by the staff and the ingenuity of the airline’s own tech system, who rewrote communications systems to overcome the loss of the airlines core check-in and bag tag technology.
Baggage issues, stemming from an airport evacuation on Saturday, were managed by allowing passengers with 10kg bags to process them at the gate. As a result of the five days of high pressure operations, Aer Lingus has seen an increase in the number of people using their twilight drop service which allows passengers to check bags the night before.
Aross the organisation, staff using agent UI technology, were deployed in three shifts to manage check-in and reduce queues, and Aer Lingus advised passengers:
- Check in online or via the Aer Lingus app in advance and bring printed or digital boarding cards to the airport.
- Passengers with 10 kg bags can proceed directly to the gate for free check-in, while those with 20 kg bags from Dublin should use bag tag and drop kiosks.
- For flights departing between 05:30 and 08:00, customers can drop 20 kg bags at Dublin Airport the previous evening from 16:00 to 22:00.
- Affected customers can check flight status online, report delayed baggage via the website, or claim refunds and compensation under EU Regulation 261/2004 for delays over three hours or cancellations.
One major learning for customers is the importance of checking in online and entering advance passenger information for countries like Spain and the UDSA which requires details such as the accommodation they are staying and contact numbers.
An Aer Lingus source shared, “ Customers with a 10K bag, just bring a wheat you to the gate, and we’ll processes at the gate and get it on board. The baggage issue was related to the evacuation of the airport on Saturday, and that built up a baggage issue which took a few days to clear.
We were essentially using a tool called agent UI, and that enables us to effectively generate electronic boarding cards for our customers without integrating with this common system, so we integrate with our back end system directly, and we’re also now using laptops directly to our back end system, train boarding cards.”
“We’ve brought in teams of people from across the organisation up at check in, using agent UI technology and take people out of queues and process them.”
