As British Columbians head home on a busy holiday Monday, travellers on BC Ferries faced some additional hurdles.
The BC Ferries website, app and phone system went down Monday morning, meaning those travelling on ferries Monday could not check on schedules, routes or sailing conditions.
BC Ferries staff were active on Twitter and said staff were aware of the issue and trying to implement a fix as soon as possible.
In a statement at just after 4 p.m. BC Ferries said the issue was a backend system failure but did not explain anything further.
Deborah Marshall, the executive director of public affairs for BC Ferries, would not go on camera Monday but told Global News before noon over the phone that the website will be back “shortly” but did not give an update on the timeline.
“Our IT team is working very diligently to get the system back up and running,” she said. “We certainly apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”
BC Ferries confirmed it is not able to access the reservation system to make any changes or cancellations for passengers.
This news follows staffing issues that impacted some sailings over the long weekend.
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On Saturday, all afternoon Queen of Capilano sailings between Horseshoe Bay and Bowen Island was cancelled due to staffing issues.
BC Ferries said it has sourced a 40-person and 12-person foot passenger-only water taxi to provide service for the route.
In a statement Monday, BC Ferries said the decision to cancel a sailing in these circumstances is made when the company has tried every option to find a replacement crew.
“We know that even one cancellation is too many for customers who rely on our service,” Marshall said in a statement. We continue our largest recruitment campaign to fill vacancies as quickly as we can. We are working on it but there is a worldwide shortage of mariners,” she said.
Marshall said they have introduced incentives and guaranteed hours for new employees and enhanced allowances for employees with certain technical qualifications.
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Global News spoke to new CEO Nicolas Jimenez last week and he said BC Ferries is keenly aware there have been many service disruptions in the past few years.
“We have decided we have to do better this summer,” he told Global News.
“We’ve taken advantage of these reciprocal arrangements with other countries to bring in technical, licensed officers. We changed our hiring model entirely.”
He did not mention the website specifically.
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