If you had a hassle booking or checking into a FlySafair flight this week, you are not alone.
The airline, which uses a major international airline reservation system called Radixx International, faced technical difficulties this week.
Radixx International claimed this is due to a “major technical event”, which has resulted in FlySafair and many other airlines, including Air Belgium, Peach Airlines in Japan, Sky Airlines in Chile, and Air Transat in Canada, experiencing online booking system issues.
The outage started during the early hours of Wednesday morning South African time. FlySafair chief marketing officer Kirby Gordon said the airline is "hoping that we will be live during the space of today."
“The outage has been incredibly frustrating inhibiting our ability to sell any new tickets or make any changes to existing reservations. Fortunately, the systems that manage airport administration are separate so there has been no disruption to operations other than that customers are unable to check-in online and must do so at the airport”.
“We wholly appreciate, and share, the frustration that this is causing our loyal customers. Of course, we will do right by our customers and not penalise anyone unable to make any changes while the systems were down," he said.
Gordon said the local developers had been working around the clock for the past two days to create a mini booking facility to assist travellers to make bookings for flights departing in the next 24 hours.
Travellers can visit the website.
"Unfortunately, passengers cannot complete their online check-in at this time. That has to be done at the airport," he said.
In a statement on Thursday, Radixx announced that the company is in the process of restoring service to the approximately 20 Radixx airline customers affected by this event.
"On April 20, 2021, Radixx noticed unusual activity related to its Radixx Res™ application. An investigation indicated that malware on the Radixx system caused the activity.
"Radixx’s highest priority was to identify and contain any issues and to restore service as soon as possible. Based on the investigation to date, Sabre’s systems, including its GDS, Airline IT, SabreSonic passenger service system and Hospitality Solutions systems, were not impacted. "The company also noted its investigation indicates that the Radixx database containing customer information was not compromised in the event.
"The company is taking steps to stand up a new Radixx application server environment. The company expects to begin bringing Radixx Res™ customers back online beginning later today, with efforts continuing over the next several days," the statement read.