ST. CROIX — Fly the Whale’s reservation system recently came back online following a two-week outage due to a malware attack on the London-based company the airline uses for its reservations, according to an airline official.
Videcom International, a London-based company specializing in airline reservation systems, experienced a malware attack on April 7 on one of its desktop computers, according to Omer ErSelcuk, Fly the Whale general manager — Commercial.
Even though Videcom shut down the infected computer, ErSelcuk said the company deleted all the data because the virus had spread into one of its servers. He stressed that no personal data got leaked. He said Videcom utilized its secondary backup server, as well as a third backup server, but that not all the backup information for Fly the Whale was included on those servers.
As a result, ErSelcuk said Fly the Whale spent the past two weeks rebuilding its database so it could turn its reservation system back on.
“As you can imagine, that’s quite challenging,” he said. “Fortunately, we have our own information and we’re able to use that to rebuild. We got to a level of comfort that we could turn the system back on on the 22nd.”
Now that the reservation system is running again, Fly the Whale is accepting reservations online and via phone at 800-468-8639, in addition to the airport counter locations. The airline is taking precautions for customers who booked flights prior to April 22 by reentering their information into its reservation system.
“We do ask folks that already had bookings with us to send their confirmation emails to us at reservations@flythewhale.com, or call in with that information, or show up at the counter a little bit earlier than we normally would,” ErSelcuk said, noting that check in is 45 minutes prior to departure.
Fly the Whale has also brought back online its WhalePak program for customers who paid for bulk ticket purchases, ErSelcuk said.
“The system is ready to go but we have to send back out passwords for our customers to be able to access that and book online,” he said.
