BC Ferries phone, app, website reservation systems experience outages Wednesday
Posted June 28, 2023 2:27 pm.
Last Updated July 4, 2023 3:25 pm.
As people look to snag a reservation with BC Ferries ahead of the Canada Day long weekend, the organization says its app, phone, and online reservation systems went down Wednesday.
After services were seemingly restored from one outage earlier in the afternoon, they were again unavailable for a short time heading into the evening.
“We did experience performance issues with our reservation database today due to the mass reassignment of bookings from the Coastal Celebration’s sailings to other sailings for the July long weekend. Our IT Department worked hard to correct this and had the system back up and running in about 90 minutes,” a release from BC Ferries issued prior to the second disruption reads.
#BCFHeadsUp Our reservation systems are currently unavailable. We are investigating the problem and will provide updates as they become available.
We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience.
— BC Ferries (@BCFerries) June 29, 2023
On Tuesday, online bookings were also down for about an hour due to a “technical glitch.”
Read more: BC Ferries reservation systems restored after ‘technical glitch’
This comes after the ferry service announced Wednesday morning that there would be fewer sailings between Vancouver and Victoria due to repairs to one vessel.
In a news release sent Wednesday morning, the company says the Coastal Celebration experienced “unexpected complications with its propulsion system,” causing a delay in its return from dry dock.
As a result, there will be eight fewer daily sailings between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay from Wednesday until July 3.
Previously, the organization faced a similar setback over the May long weekend when its website, app and phone systems all went down.
BC Ferries’ website as seen on Wednesday, June 28, 2023. (Source: BC Ferries’ website)
BC Ferries says following the service disruption last month, it has taken preventative measures.
“Since the May long weekend, we’ve enhanced the level and frequency of our system monitoring and additional memory is being added to the system database. More servers are also being added to our system infrastructure next month. We’ll continue to make improvements,” the email reads.
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-With files from Greg Bowman
