BA crisis continues as passengers left without bags
British Airways’ flight schedules are back to normal today but the three-day crisis over the Bank Holiday weekend is believed to have cost the airline up to £150 million.
It admitted that 75,000 passengers were affected when flights worldwide were grounded over the weekend due to an IT failure, which the airline blamed on a power surge at 9.30 on Saturday morning.
Chief executive Alex Cruz, who has faced calls for his resignation since Saturday, claimed that a back-up IT system failed to kick-in when the primary system crashed.
He told the BBC that the power failure had affected all its systems including baggage, flight and customer communication technology.
As a result, BA was forced to ground all flights from 170 airports in 70 countries on Saturday and many flights on Sunday and Monday too.
The crisis, which the GMB union has blamed the problem on technical staff being outsourced from the UK to India, caused the share price of BA’s parent company IAG to fall 2.5%.
This morning, the airline said: "Our IT systems are now back up and running and we will be operating a full flight schedule at Heathrow and Gatwick."
However, it warned that many passengers had been forced to travel without their bags and it admitted that reuniting them might take a considerable time
Cruz said the hardware problem was restored ‘after a few hours’, and promised the company would ‘make sure that it doesn’t happen again’.
Cruz said there had been no redundancies or outsourcing of IT in this area, insisting there had been ‘locally hired’ staff attending to the maintenance and running of the infrastructure.
However, BA faced further criticism today when it was claimed that the airline was charging delayed passengers £800 to upgrade to spare seats in premium economy.
Some passengers also accused BA of profiting from their misery by charging a premium rate number for a claims hotline, although the airline said they were able to use an alternative 0800 freephone number.
Cruz has apologised to passengers in a statement in which he said:
"On behalf of all of us at British Airways, I want to apolgise for the fact that you’ve had to go through these very trying circumstances and to thank you for your patience and for your understanding."
He reassured passengers who had to return home without their bags, saying they would be sent by courrier.
Anyone affected can rebook for any time until the end of November or have a full refund.
On Monday, Cruz issued another statement saying the airline was carrying out an in-depth investigation into what went wrong but reassured customers it would not happen again.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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