Air Canada experienced technical problems causing flight delays for the second time in a week yesterday. The airline advised travellers to check the status of their flights online amid delays caused by an IT issue. South of the border, Spirit Airlines experienced similar problems on Thursday.

By Thursday afternoon, the airline said its communicator system has begun to stabilize after experiencing technical problems, but travellers were still expected to face delays and cancellations before it was back fully up and running.

By late afternoon, a total of 227 Air Canada flights, or 43% of the airline’s scheduled load, have been delayed Thursday, along with 34 cancellations, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.

Air Canada Rouge has also experienced 78 delays, or 52% of its flights, as well as 11 cancellations.

Air Canada briefly grounded its planes last Thursday due to a problem with the system it uses to communicate with aircraft and monitor their performance. The issue caused delays for nearly half of Air Canada’s flights that day.

Air Canada said the latest issue “was in the same systems” but unrelated to the problem it experienced last week.

“We have been in the process of upgrading this system using a third-party supplier’s technology. Air Canada will continue to work with the manufacturer to ensure stability in the system in the future,” the airline said in an emailed statement.

“We apologize for the impact on our customers and appreciate their patience. We are working hard to get people on their way as soon as possible.”

It said Thursday afternoon that aircraft “continue to move although still at a lower-than-normal rate” and it anticipated impacts to continue throughout the day.

“As a result, customers may experience delays and in some instances cancellations as we move through recovery,” Air Canada said. “We have also put in place a flexible policy for those who wish to change their travel plans at no cost.”

Spirit Airlines

Spirit said in its initial tweet that the technical issue they were dealing with impacted their website, app and airport kiosks. A tweet around noon EDT said that the network issue between third party services had been resolved.

Nearly 50% of Spirit’s flights were delayed, according to FlightAware.

“We apologize for any delays and inconvenience, and we’re now working our way back to normal operations,” the Miramar, Florida-based budget airline said.