British Airways passengers were plunged into a second day of chaos over the weekend, as a worldwide computer power failure caused a third of flights to be cancelled.
The airline was hit by computer difficulties on Saturday, which was caused by a problem with the IT system’s power supply.
Thousands of passengers faced delays and cancellations, with problems continuing on into Monday for short-haul flights. The problem has now been rectified, but the airline are currently dealing with a backlog of passengers who were not able to make flights on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.
In a statement released on Sunday, chief executive Alex Cruz said: “I know this has been a horrible time for customers. We’re not there yet, but we are doing our very best to sort things out for you.”
— British Airways (@British_Airways) May 28, 2017
Heathrow airport was hit the worst by the failure, with services from Gatwick expected to return to normal on Monday. The IT problem was unusually catastrophic for BA, with many commentators questioning why the outage continued for so long and why there was no back up system in place, will likely prompt further speculation over cost-cutting at the airline.
In 2016 it was criticised for outsourcing IT work to India instead of retaining operations with loyal staff in the UK. However, the airline denied the claim, saying:
“We would never compromise the integrity and security of our IT systems. IT services are now provided globally by a range of suppliers and this is very common practice across all industries.”