Scots affected amid BA chaos as short-haul flights are cancelled
BRITISH Airways short-haul flights from Heathrow were cancelled yesterday morning, impacting Scots routes.
The airline said the problem was related to a hardware issue and was not due to a cyber attack, putting it under further pressure to improve its IT systems and communication with passengers.
The major outage caused cancellations and delays of flights, pile-ups of luggage and passengers stuck on planes after landing at Heathrow.
BA’s website and app were inaccessible for hours on Friday evening, preventing customers from checking in online or booking flights, while yesterday passengers criticised the “absolute chaos” at Heathrow.
Dr Penny Slaney, 62, a consultant radiologist from Worcestershire, said the lack of communication from BA had been “appalling”, while people complained on social media about a lack of information.
Simon Calder, travel correspondent at The Independent, was in Qatar and was due to fly home overnight with BA.
He said: “British Airways, along with every other UK airline, invests a huge amount in safety and has an outstanding safety record. But with yet another weekend’s flying severely damaged by what BA calls ‘systems disruption’, the airline evidently has a pressing need to invest in IT.
“At a time when British Airways is still losing money at a prodigious rate, it can hardly afford to pay out tens of millions of pounds in recompense for its technical shortcomings. But that is exactly what the airline faces.
“Longer term, the reputational damage is rising with every cancellation. I calculate 1,500 passengers got up very early this morning to fly on British Airways from Heathrow to Geneva – and the same number waiting at the Swiss airport to come home.
“As with the thousands who have lost trips to Italy, the Canary Islands and beyond, they are unlikely to forget this weekend in a hurry.”
It was BA’s second outage in 10 days and the latest of several high-profile IT incidents to hit the airline.
Last summer, BA settled a legal claim over a major data breach that affected 420,000 customers and staff.
BA said it was offering customers on cancelled services the option of a refund or to rebook on to another service.