BA resumes some flights after computer failure causes chaos
Print Edition
BRITISH Airways resumed some flights from Britain’s two biggest airports yesterday after a global computer system failure created chaos, but hundreds of passengers were kept waiting for hours at London Heathrow.
BA said it aimed to operate the majority of services from Heathrow and a near normal schedule from Gatwick, the capital’s second busiest airport. Heathrow, however, said it expected further delays and cancelations of BA flights. At Heathrow’s Terminal 5, where BA is the dominant carrier, hundreds of passengers were waiting in line yesterday and flight arrival boards showed canceled flights.
Some passengers were curled up under blankets on the floor or sleeping slumped on luggage trolleys. Several passengers complained about a lack of information from BA representatives at the airport. Others said their luggage had been lost.
“Many of our IT systems are back up today,” BA Chairman and Chief Executive Alex Cruz said.
“All my British Airways colleagues on the ground and in the air are pulling out all the stops to get our operation back up to normal as quickly as we possibly can, we’re not there yet.”
Cruz said BA planned to fly all its long haul services from Heathrow yesterday, although there would be delays due to the knock on impact from Saturday’s disruption and some short haul flights would be canceled.
He also asked passengers not to arrive at Heathrow too early, warning they would not be admitted into Terminal 5 until 90 minutes before their flight’s scheduled departure time.
Gatwick and Heathrow also told passengers not to travel to the airports unless they were rebooked on other flights.
BA canceled all its flights from Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, and Gatwick on Saturday after a power supply problem disrupted its flight operations worldwide and also hit its call centres and website. Cruz said there was no evidence of any cyber attack.
Thousands of passengers queued for hours in departure halls at the airports on a particularly busy weekend. Today is a public holiday and many children were starting a one-week school holiday. Cruz said those who decided not to fly could rebook for dates until the end of November, or receive a full refund.
While BA could face a one-off financial hit from the cancelations, the risk to its reputation among customers could have a more damaging longer-term effect.
It is already facing declining customer ratings following unpopular decisions made as it faces competition from low-cost airlines. These include starting to charge for food on short haul flights last year to cut costs.
“There will be short term financial repercussions of this outage in terms of lost revenue, compensation for passengers and cost of alternative arrangements,” said Kunal Kothari, an equity analyst at Old Mutual Global Investors.
“I do not, however, expect the outage to have lasting financial repercussions for the group.”
While other airlines have been hit by computer problems, the scale and length of BA’s troubles were unusual.
Delta Air Lines canceled hundreds of flights and delayed many others last August after an outage hit its computer systems.
Last month, Germany’s Lufthansa and Air France suffered a global system outage which briefly prevented them from boarding passengers.
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