Aer Lingus has come under fire recently as customers with certain Irish names have noticed they can’t use the traditional spelling of their names during the booking process.
Passengers of the low-cost Irish airline Aer Lingus have taken to social media to air their grievances about the airline’s booking system.
Why, you ask? Well, because those among us with a fada in their names, which are very common in Irish names, are unable to input them into the company’s reservation system.
Aer Lingus systems can’t process certain Irish names – you fada be kidding me
When booking flights, we must double, triple check and check again that the names on our booking match the names on our passports exactly with no mistakes.
Despite this, passengers with Irish names like Siobhán, Sinéad, Áine or Róisin have been unable to complete the booking process with their names being 100% accurate.
This is not a new issue. Passengers have been apparently complaining about Aer Lingus’ booking system for decades.
One customer took to Twitter to share her dismay at having to check in at the airport rather than the ease of online because of differences between her COVID travel documents and her boarding pass. This was all down to being unable to enter her name properly with a fada.
Another social media user joked, “Do you reckon the reason Beyoncé never flies Aer Lingus is cause there’s a fada in her name?”.
Outdated systems – ASTRAL
A lot of the system’s restrictions come down to its age. Aer Lingus still uses the ASTRAL reservation system, which is nearly 60 years old.
Despite the legacy technology having multiple upgrades over time, the insular system, which is used exclusively by Aer Lingus, still doesn’t allow using current Unicode standard characters that were introduced in the 90s.
Speaking to The Irish Mirror, Aer Lingus said, “The Aer Lingus booking system, Astral, which was developed in the late 60s cannot facilitate the use of special characters as it was built on a platform which does not cater for special characters.
We recognise the limitations of the system with respect to accepting special characters and apologise to customers for any inconvenience caused”.
Tech problems with low-cost airlines – decades-old systems
Thankfully, the main issue that Aer Lingus users face seems to be limited to the legal spelling of specific names.
However, ageing digital infrastructure in the world of the aviation industry seems to have become a general issue over the past several years.
For example, Southwest Airlines experienced a significant outage in December 2022, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded in North America. The airline blamed the cancellations on old crew and aircraft scheduling software.
Speaking to the Financial Times in 2021, ex-British Airways chief executive Alex Cruz criticised major carriers still relying on old tech. He said, “If you look at the underlying systems that all big airlines… rely on, it is 20, 30, 40, 50-year-old technology, it is truly amazing to see”.
