BA DENY CHAOS CAUSED BY CUTS
Boss insists outsourcing of IT jobs wasn’t to blame
BRITISH Airways yesterday denied outsourcing was to blame for the “catastrophic” IT failure that brought their operations to a halt.
The GMB union suggested the disruption, which has affected 75,000 passengers, could have been prevented if the airline had not cut “hundreds of dedicated and loyal” IT staff last year and contracted the work to India.
But BA’s chief executive Alex Cruz insisted this wasn’t the case.
He said: “All the parties involved around this particular event have not been involved in any type of outsourcing in any foreign country.
“They have all been local issues around a local data centre which has been managed and fixed by local resources.”
A number of BA flights between London and Scotland’s three main airports in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen were still being cancelled yesterday.
Passengers also faced further delays, with one flight from Glasgow taking off four-and-a-half hours late.
Cruz apologised “profusely” for the hardship caused to customers.
He said a power surge on Saturday morning had a “catastrophic effect over some communications hardware, which eventually affected all the messaging across our systems”.
The BA boss added there was “no evidence whatsoever that there was a cyber attack of any sort”.
Cruz promised an “exhaustive investigation” into the failure and insisted a similar incident would never happen again. He said two-thirds of the passengers affected would have reached their destination by last night.
But experts predict the knock-on effect could continue for several days – and BA are facing huge compensation costs, with reports suggesting the bill could top £100million.
Mick Rix, the GMB’s national officer for aviation, yesterday said Theresa May was warned last year about the dangers of BA outsourcing IT work.
He said the union wrote to her while she was still home secretary to warn of the security risks, adding: “She did not reply and instead chose to ignore the warnings from our members.”
But Cruz offered assurances that no customer data or any list, including terror watch lists, had been compromised by the glitch.