British Airways confirmed that all flights were operating to schedule on Tuesday, after a weekend of disruptions that led to calls for the resignation of the airline’s CEO.
In a statement on their website, British Airways said: “Our IT systems are now back up and running and we will be operating a full flight schedule at Heathrow and Gatwick on Tuesday 30 May.”
Chief executive Alex Cruz blamed a power surge for the disruption which affected 75,000 people, sending its IT system into shutdown and cancelling flights for thousands of passengers over the Bank Holiday weekend.
Others blamed BA’s recent series of cost-cutting measures, designed to keep the company in competition with budget airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet. On Monday, Cruz refused to tender his resignation, just saying that he was “profusely sorry” for the incident.
“There was a power surge and there was a back-up system, which did not work at that particular point in time. It was restored after a few hours in terms of some hardware changes… we will make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” Mr Cruz said in his first interview.
The three days of cancelled flights will leave a big hole in BA’s budget, with flight compensation website Flightright.com estimating that the 800 flights canceled at Gatwick and Heathrow on Saturday and Sunday would cost the company around 61 million euros in compensation under EU rules.