THOUSANDS IN FLIGHTS CHAOS
Meltdown hits BA passengers
THOUSANDS of British Airways passengers were stranded yesterday after the airline suffered a global IT meltdown.
Tempers flared as all BA flights from Heathrow and Gatwick airports were cancelled until midnight.
The chaos – blamed on “catastrophic” IT problems – is expected to go on for days, experts warned.
BA denied the problem was caused by a cyber attack and said it had “no evidence” of hacking.
Travellers were stranded in huge check-in lines or on board planes for more than two hours during the bank holiday getaway.
Problems spiralled after parts of BA’s website and app failed to work, causing passengers trying to checkin online to miss flights.
Fears were raised the system could be under cyber attack after a pilot and gate staff made the claim at Gatwick Airport.
Some frustrated passengers were stuck on the tarmac at Heathrow for hours. Others were stranded on planes in Rome, Belfast and Bulgaria by the “very severe disruption”.
A BA spokesman apologised and vowed to tackle the problem.
But passengers blasted “disgraceful” customer service and said the meltdown had created “carnage”. Terry Page, 28, from London, was booked on to a flight to Texas but was stranded in a Heathrow queue for two hours.
He claimed BA “made no announcements at all” about the delays. He added: “I tried to use their website to get a screenshot of my boarding pass, but the website isn’t working either.”
Philip Bloom, who was stuck on board a Heathrow-Belfast flight, added: “We haven’t been told very much, just that there is a worldwide computer system failure.”
BA could face huge compensation claims. A spokesman said: “We apologise to customers who are facing some delays following an IT outage. We are working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.”