Pierluigi Paganini
May 28, 2017
In the last 24 hours, British Airways has canceled all flights from Gatwick and Heathrow and flights worldwide suffered major delays due to a severe IT failure.
Global operations were affected and while I’m writing the company it trying to restore them.
An IT problem appears to be the root cause of the decision to cancel all flights from both airports before 6 pm UK time on Saturday.
The system failure affected the principal systems used by British Airways, including the booking system, baggage handling, mobile phone apps and check-in desks.
“Following the major IT system failure experienced earlier today, with regret we have had to cancel all flights leaving from Heathrow and Gatwick for the rest of Saturday,” a spokeswoman said.
“We are working hard to get our customers who were due to fly today on to the next available flights over the course of the rest of the weekend. Those unable to fly will be offered a full refund.”
More than 1,000 flights were affected, scenes of panic and confusion were observed in the airports, travelers complained that they had been left in the dark.
“More than 1,000 flights were affected. At Heathrow alone, BA had 406 flights scheduled to depart after 9am and a further 71 at Gatwick, according to flightstats.com on Saturday.” reported The Guardian.
“We are extremely sorry for the huge inconvenience this is causing our customers and we understand how frustrating this must be, especially for families hoping to get away on holiday.” said Chief executive Alex Cruz.
The airline’s Twitter account was the constantly updated about the situation, the company told the travelers to don’t go to the airport unless they have a confirmed booking for travel.
While the airports were paralyzed, rumors of a cyber attack were circulating on the Internet, recent massive WannaCry ransomware attack demonstrated the fragility of computer systems worldwide.
British Airways promptly denied this thesis.
“We’ve found no evidence that it’s a cyber-attack.” said the company.
https://twitter.com/SeanRobinsonUU/status/868480738034843648
According to the GMB union, such kind of problems is caused by the policy of the company to outsource hundreds of IT jobs to India.
Passengers have suffered serious problems on Friday due to a failure of the baggage system.
Passengers departing from the EU have some rights under EU law to claim compensation for delayed or canceled flights.
Airlines are required to give passengers food and drinks for delays of more than two hours, they have to provide also hotel accommodation for overnight delays and transfers.
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(Security Affairs – British Airways, ITsystem failure)
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