Another long weekend, another website outage at BC Ferries.
Little more than a month after BC Ferries’ website crashed on the final day of the Victoria Day long weekend for the better part of a day, the main website has been experiencing outages Friday (June 30) afternoon.
BC Ferries announced just after 1 p.m. that its website and app was unavailable with IT teams investigating an undescribed “technical issue” in issuing an apology. BC Ferries issued another tweet at around 2:40 p.m. saying that it had resolved the issue. But the website went down again at around 3:30 p.m.
#BCFHeadsUp 🚧 The BC Ferries website is currently unavailable as our IT team is investigating a technical issue. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we address the matter. ^ts
— BC Ferries (@BCFerries) June 30, 2023
#ServiceNotice
— BC Ferries (@BCFerries) June 30, 2023
Our IT teams have resolved the issues that our website was experiencing. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this outage. Access our website here: https://t.co/HcMQDf9yb0 ^ms
#BCFHeadsUp The BC Ferries website is unavailable as our IT team is investigating a technical issue. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we address the matter. ^ms
— BC Ferries (@BCFerries) June 30, 2023
The temporary outage came not only on one of the busiest travelling days, but after BC Ferries had already cancelled 48 sailings between on its busiest route between Swartz Bay in Greater Victoria and Tsawwassen in Greater Vancouver.
From June 28 to July 3, there will be eight fewer daily sailings between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay than originally scheduled.
BC Ferries cancelled the sailings after crews had discovered technical problems at one of its major vessels, while it was in dry dock.
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RELATED: BC Ferries cancelling 48 sailings ahead of Canada Day long weekend
While BC Ferries did not cancel bookings, it had to spread them across three other vessels.
BC Ferries paired this announcement with a warning that there would be less space for standby vehicles without reservations, as well as long lines and sailing waits.
Evidence so far confirms the accuracy of these warnings.
Footage from either side of the Swartz Bay-Tsawwassen route shows long lines of waiting vehicles and as Friday afternoon, reservation space on this route is fully booked for today. The next available sailing for non-reservation vehicles is Saturday, July 1 at 6 a.m.
Friday’s temporary outages have come after the president and CEO of BC Ferries had issued a public apology for the Victoria Day long weekend.
Nicolas Jimenez said at the time that staff were working on ways to prevent something like this from happening again.
“We have already put into place today measures to add capacity, so that this issue won’t happen again, but we need to step back and look at our (IT) architecture more broadly to ensure that it is built to purpose,” he said at the time.
@wolfgangdepner
wolfgang.depner@blackpress.ca
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