British Airways starts flying again from UK after IT breakdown

Airways resumed some flights from Britain’s two biggest airports on Sunday after a global computer system failure created chaos, leaving planes grounded and thousands of passengers queuing for hours.

BA said it aimed to operate the majority of services from London Heathrow on Sunday and a near normal schedule from Gatwick, the capital’s second busiest airport.

Heathrow authorities, however, said they expected further delays and cancellations of BA flights.

“We are continuing to work hard to restore all of our IT systems,” BA added.

“We are extremely sorry for the huge disruption caused to customers.”

A union official had on Saturday blamed BA cost-cutting for the travel chaos, saying the airline had laid off hundreds of IT staff last year and outsourced the work to India.

“This could have all been avoided,” said Mick Rix, national officer for aviation at the GMB union.

Heathrow told passengers not to travel to the airport unless they were rebooked on other flights.

British Airways cancelled 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.

A spokeswoman for BA could not immediately detail the exact number of flights cancelled on Saturday.

Alex Cruz, the chairman and chief executive of BA, part of Europe’s largest airline group IAG, said there was no evidence of any cyber attack.

Thousands of passengers queued up for hours in departure halls at the airports on a particularly busy weekend coinciding with bank holidays. AGENCIES