On Thursday, November 1, all flights of the national airline Turkish Airlines at Istanbul Airport were canceled between 7:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. local time. It appears the airline’s system was down.
“Due to general disruptions and interruptions to IT infrastructure, all passengers who booked flights between November 1 and November 2, 2023 (inclusive) were granted additional change and refund rights, provided that the transactions are carried out before November 7, 2023, “, said client service .
A cyberattack?
Social media suggests the problem may have been caused by cyberattacks. According to Flightradar24 passengers on more than a hundred planes were affected and could not take off in time.
Turkish Airlines system outage affected 92 flights at Istanbul New Airport (IST) and 14 flights at Sabiha Gökçen Airport (SAW
The problem was quickly resolved but many passengers remained behind.
The technical problem was resolved and operations gradually returned to normal, said the spokesperson for the Turkish national company Turkish Airlines, Yahya Ustun, on Twitter – X.
He denied speculation on social media that the problem was caused by a cyberattack. “There is no cyberattack situation,” he said.
Customer service responded quite well
Reservation changes were made free of charge and unused tickets will be refunded without any deduction due to the technical disruption, Turkish Airlines said in a statement on its website.
“No no-show penalties will be charged to passengers who have not yet acted even if their flight time has expired,” the statement also said.
By midnight, the problem was resolved, but the consequences of the outage were felt for at least another day until the airports returned to their scheduled schedule.
