BA chief refuses to quit or blame cost-cutting for flights fiasco

Alex Cruz refuses to quit flag carrier after IT failures caused three days of delays and cancellations

THE boss of British Airways has refused to step down or admit that IT blunders which resulted in global travel chaos were the result of his cost-cutting measures.

Ending his silence yesterday, Alex Cruz, the chief executive, said he apologised “profusely” to customers but had no intention of quitting after more than 100,000 trips were disrupted.

Critics had suggested the incident occurred as a result of much of the firm’s IT staff being outsourced from the UK to India to save money.

Yesterday Mr Cruz denied this was the case, blaming a power surge at a data centre at Heathrow, which caused all its systems to go down.

Last night IT industry sources suggested BA’S technical team had made a basic error by storing its backup computer system in the same location as its main system, leaving it vulnerable to a power surge. One IT consultant said: “The person in charge of this is going to get a huge grilling.”

BA bosses are in the middle of a major operation to make savings, under which much of the firm’s IT operation has been outsourced.

Willie Walsh, the chief executive of BA’S parent company, IAG, who earned more than £2 million last year, has refused to comment on the fiasco.

ALEX CRUZ, the chief executive of British Airways, has said he will not stand down despite the company’s IT failures resulting in three days of travel chaos over the weekend.

Mr Cruz insisted yesterday that the fiasco was not the result of cost-cutting, which involved some IT functions being transferred to India.

The airline confirmed an “exceptional” power surge caused the collapse of its computers, including the backup, halting its flight, baggage and customer communication systems. Thousands of passengers were left furious by delays or cancellations during the bank holiday.

However, IT industry sources suggested last night that BA had blundered by locating its backup in the same area as its main operation. One IT consultant, who did not wish to be named, said: “Backup systems should be on completely different power infrastructure so that in the event of a power surge it doesn’t knock everything out. The person in charge of this is going to get a huge grilling.”

A BA spokesman said: “At this stage we know there was an exceptional power surge that collapsed our IT systems. It appears to have been so strong that it rendered the backup system ineffective. This resulted in an outage of all our systems across our 170 airports in 70 different countries. These systems are highly inter-dependent and normally transmit tens of millions of messages a day between different parts of the airline.”

Mr Cruz said he was “profusely sorry” to the thousands of stranded passengers and claimed around two thirds will have reached their destination by the end of yesterday.

More than 100,000 passengers have had their half-term and bank holiday travel plans thrown into chaos. Many had flights cancelled, were separated from their luggage or stranded abroad as the airline struggled to cope with Saturday’s incident.

BA bosses are carrying out a £91million cost-cutting drive which has led to much of the firm’s IT operation being outsourced. The savings are likely to be dwarfed by what the airline will now owe passengers in compensation.

After BA’S IT systems went into meltdown in 2015, the GMB, the union which represents BA staff, wrote to Theresa May four times during her time as Home Secretary to warn that the firm’s cost-cutting risked further chaos. Each of these letters was ignored, it claimed.

Mick Rix, aviation lead at GMB, criticised Willie Walsh, chief executive of IAG which owns BA, for remaining silent over the issue.

He said: “Willie Walsh has driven these cost savings and it is shocking that frontline BA staff are having to take brunt of this anger globally, while the executives have gone running for cover. It is a national disgrace.”