B ritish Airways is currently undergoing a “major IT system failure” which will hopefully be resolved in the next couple of hours — and the major global disruption has apparently been occurring for at least the past seven hours, according to this discussion which was posted on FlyerTalk.
Another Airline, Another Meltdown: This Time, British Airways
The official announcement from British Airways is as follows:
We have experienced a major IT system failure that is causing very severe disruption to our flight operations worldwide.
The terminals at London Heathrow and Gatwick have become extremely congested and we have cancelled all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick before 6pm UK time today, so please do not come to the airports.
We are currently also unable to assist with rebooking through ba.com or our contact centres.
More information
We will provide more information on ba.com, Twitter and through airport communication channels as soon as we can for flights due to depart after that time. We will be updating the situation via the media regularly throughout the day.
We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience this is causing our customers and we are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.
Some information which has been posted to Twitter from British Airways includes that “We apologise for the current IT systems outage. We are working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.”
https://twitter.com/British_Airways/status/868403485729071104
Also, flights “from Heathrow and Gatwick have been cancelled.”
We're sorry you've been caught up in today's disruption, Mark. Fliights from Heathrow and Gatwick have been cancelled. ^Anthony
— British Airways (@British_Airways) May 27, 2017
Summary
Other airlines which have experienced systemwide meltdowns in recent months include Delta Air Lines — both last year and earlier this year — and United Airlines earlier this year — and I am not sure why there seems to be an increased failure rate of the operations of some airlines lately.
You are most likely out of luck today if you are scheduled to be a passenger aboard an airplane operated by British Airways, which has alerted passengers not to arrive at the airport before 6:00 in the evening British Summer Time — but I hope that this situation is resolved in your favour as soon as possible.
You can attempt to file a claim of your flight disruption with British Airways — but I would personally wait to see what happens first.
At least representatives of British Airways have been responding to the numerous “tweets” which have been posted today by customers — albeit with little solace to quell the frustration and inconvenience of customers…
…but neither the source of the outage nor any plans for compensating customers is publicly known at this time — although FlyerTalk member alextheengineer posted that “Rumour has it there was a power cut this morning and for whatever reason the backup power source didn’t come to life as planned. Although power did come back on it was too late to recover the situation. As I say – this is only a rumour which are rife in engineering at the moment.”
FlyerTalk member LondonElite just posted moments ago that “A friend just reported from the complete cluster bomb at T5. They’ve been told all flights cancelled for the rest of the day, no one has any clues when systems will be up again. No information given about rebooking or rescheduling. One agent told him he’s better off going home and checking the website tomorrow morning. What a complete disaster at the start of half term.”
However, FlyerTalk member usbusinesstraveller claims that his “brother and his family are on BA164 TLV-LHR and are pushing back. That’s approx (only) 2 hour delay. Apparently the captain told them this is the first flight out since the outage.”
Let us hope that this major issue is resolved as soon as possible.
Source: British Airways.
