British Airways (BA) claims that its IT systems are now ‘back up and running’ after most of these main services failed over one of the busiest weekends of the year, affecting hundreds of flights and some 75,000 passengers around the world.

 

Long queues of frustrated passengers trailed all the way through BA’s dedicated London Heathrow Terminal 5 on the landside and out onto the forecourt, with similar scenes at London Gatwick – in addition to the mayhem caused at ‘overseas’ airports where BA passengers were also stranded.

 

THE WORST DAY…

Last Saturday proved to be the worst day, with virtually no BA flights at all at Heathrow or Gatwick, although many services at Gatwick were restored last Sunday, while flights at Heathrow continued to be severely disrupted.

 

The airline has since been accused of cutting corners after outsourcing its IT services to India back in 2016 and the GMB union has been quick to point the finger, calling the upshot of last weekend’s debacle the result of BA being ‘plain greedy’.

 

‘EXTREMELY SORRY…’

However, BA CEO Alex Cruz denied this. In a statement yesterday he said: “Our IT systems are now back up and running and we will be operating a full flight schedule at Heathrow and Gatwick on Tuesday 30 May.

 

“We are extremely sorry for the frustration and inconvenience customers experienced over the Bank Holiday weekend and thank them for their patience and understanding. We are continuing to work to get delayed bags to customers as quickly as possible.”

 

Cruz said he readily accepted that this has been ‘a horrible time’ for passengers whose holidays were ruined while they waited for planes which simply didn’t operate.

 

SEVERE HEATHROW CONGESTION

In fact, this was so bad at one point that Cruz himself advised passengers by video not to turn up too early at Heathrow, as passengers were not being admitted to T5 until 90 minutes before scheduled flight take-off times because of the congestion.

 

Not surprisingly, serious questions are already been asked why BA did not seem to have any back up options once its main IT system broke down, with some commentators and the GMB union already asking whether last year’s decision by BA to outsource its IT functions to India was a contributor the system meltdown – an assertion denied by BA.

 

Mick Rix, GMB National Officer for Aviation said: “We can only feel genuinely sorry for the tens of thousands of passengers who are stranded at airports and face having their travel plans and holidays ruined.

 

“This could have all been avoided. BA in 2016 made hundreds of dedicated and loyal IT staff redundant and outsourced the work to India. BA have made substantial profits in for a number of years, and many viewed the company’s actions of being just plain greedy”.

 

BA now faces a huge compensation bill from those passengers who were unable to travel, as well as questions from International Airlines Group investors when they finally see the cost of it all. Current estimates are suggesting this could exceed £100m ($128m) when all passenger claims have finally been processed.