BA ‘power surge’ mystery
THE mystery over massive disruption caused to British Airways’ IT systems deepened last night as the UK’S leading energy suppliers said there had been no power surge.
BA has claimed that the weekend disruption, which left 75,000 travellers stranded, was caused by a surge that caused computer systems at Heathrow to fail. But Scottish and Southern Electricity, which runs the network in west London, revealed its systems were “operating as normal on Saturday morning”.
A spokesman for the National Grid said: “We have no record of anything unusual in our network on Saturday. There were no system issues.”
The global IT failure affected travellers worldwide and last night thousands of people had still not been reunited with their luggage.
Last night BA claimed the power surge was “internal” and said it was still investigating the cause.
It added there was “no evidence” of sabotage and was investigating whether it was caused by either human error or a mechanical malfunction. The power should have been gradually returned to the systems, but instead a source
told The Daily Telegraph it was returned in an “uncontrolled fashion” and resulted in “catastrophic physical damage” to its systems.
BA has ruled out an IT failure and has launched an investigation into what caused the power surge and if a person or computer was responsible for switching the power back on.
Willie Walsh, chief executive of International Airlines Group, BA’S parent company, said that the supply went down on Saturday morning but that the problem was compounded by an “uncontrolled” reboot of the system, which then knocked out the entire IT infrastructure.
The sudden return of power led to the loss of flight, baggage and customer communication information. BA’S uninterruptible power supply is supposed to use multiple power sources, including a standby generator, to maintain a constant supply to BA’S two main IT centres near Heathrow.
IAG, the parent company of BA, which saw its share price fall sharply, said that the issue was not linked to any problem with the external supply provided by energy companies or outsourced IT suppliers in India. BA chief executive Alex Cruz said the outsourcing of jobs was not to blame.
The carrier was unable to resume a full schedule until Tuesday and many passengers who had already checked in when the problem arose are still waiting to be reunited with their luggage.