Cathay Pacific website, check-in, ticketing offline this weekend

If your plans for the coming weekend include travelling with Cathay Pacific or booking a flight with the airline, you'll need to take care of any online business by tonight or leave it until Monday: Cathay's website and many IT systems are going down for upgrade over the weekend.

The airline's website, ticketing, online check-in, seat selection, airport check-in kiosks and other computer systems will be unavailable from Saturday 11 February, and will gradually come back online over the course of Sunday 12 February.

Cathay is expecting to run its normal weekend flights, however, but a statement suggests "passengers may wish to arrive at the airport earlier than normal".

The airline is recommending that passengers travelling on an e-ticket (and who doesn't, these days?) bring printed confirmation of their reservation to the airport.

Since Cathay allows online check-in 48 hours prior to departure, but if you don't manage to check in online then you'll need to queue up for an agent at the airport.

And if you need to speak to an agent to book your flight, you might want to do it before the weekend.

An airline statement warned of potential call centre delays: "in the week following the transition, Cathay Pacific's worldwide call centres may experience higher than normal call volumes. Should that be the case, the airline will do all possible to minimise inconvenience and passengers' patience is appreciated."

Cathay Pacific's chief operating officer Ivan Chu apologised for the inconvenience, explaining: "Preparations for this change began several years back as it is quite a massive undertaking. We appreciate customers' understanding and patience for these necessary measures."

John Walton

Aviation journalist and travel columnist John took his first long-haul flight when he was eight weeks old and hasn't looked back since. Well, except when facing rearwards in business class.