So much for a bad year... BA owner’s £871m profit

IT has been hit by strikes, scrapped free food for shorthaul economy flights and its IT system collapsed wrecking thousands of holidays.

But British Airways has helped its parent company IAG to an £871million profit for the first six months of this year.

That figure was up 37 per cent on the year before thanks to lower fuel costs and strong trading over the holiday season.

But BA admitted it was still processing some of the compensation claims it received following the power failure that left thousands of passengers stranded. It said some customers will have to wait longer to get their money back because their cases are ‘more complicated than others’.

Around 75,000 passengers were grounded over the May bank holiday weekend when the airline’s computer system failed.

BA, which has launched an investigation into the fiasco, said the meltdown was caused by an engineer who disconnected the power supply.

The failure, which saw 726 flights cancelled, was initially believed to cost the airline at least £80million, but BA yesterday said the cost of payments will not exceed £58million.

Willie Walsh, chief executive of IAG – which owns BA – said the ‘vast majority’ of claims had been settled, but declined to say how many of the 75,000 affected are still left empty-handed.

He said: ‘We are doing everything we can to make good [on] the disruption that the customers experienced, but it was an isolated event.’

Passenger numbers were relatively unaffected by the IT incident, with the airline group – which includes Aer Lingus and Spanish airlines Vueling and Iberia – up 4.6 per cent on the year before.