Owner of BA estimates IT failure will cost it £80m

British Airways owner International Airlines Group (IAG) has said a major IT failure that caused travel chaos for tens of thousands of passengers last month will cost the company “in the order of” £80 million.

IAG chief executive Willie Walsh gave the estimate during the airline giant’s annual general meeting, where the company also apologised to customers.

He said the airline had “suffered a power failure to its primary data centre”. As a result, 726 flights were cancelled and some 75,000 passengers stranded.

Walsh added: “Our initial assessment of the gross cost of the disruption is in the order of £80m. We will update the market at the appropriate time with more details.”

He also stressed that the failure “had absolutely nothing to do with changes to the way we resource our IT systems and services” and said IAG was “working hard to ensure that affected passengers are compensated as soon as possible”, with the group launching an independent investigation following the incident.