Many Air Canada plane departures and arrivals were delayed Thursday after computer failures were discovered just after 11:15 a.m.

Air Canada has confirmed the situation, which it said was due to a “temporary technical issue” affecting communications with aircraft and their operational monitoring.

“This issue has caused some delays, but the system is now back to normal and the precautionary ground shutdown program has been lifted,” Christophe, the company’s vice president of communications, said in an email. Hennebule.

At Air Canada’s apparent request, a ground stop arrangement (ground stop The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered a ban for all of North America, the airline said. That order, which banned the Canadian carrier from landing or taking off in Canada or the United States, was lifted less than an hour later at 12:15 p.m.

Canceled flights?

We do not currently know exactly how many passengers, flights or airports were affected by the “technical issues” and what impact they had on flight schedule compliance.

However, the Canadian airline’s spokesman acknowledged that the problem went beyond the strict airspace of Montreal-Trudeau Airport (YUL).

According to the American company FlightAware, which specializes in recording real-time flight tracking, Air Canada had to cancel 19 flights at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, and a total of 173 other flights were delayed. At this point, these delays affected the equivalent of 34% of his daily activities.

On the Toronto Stock Exchange, the airline’s stock closed Thursday at $21.73 per share, up 1.83% from the previous day’s close.