BA puts figure on cost of IT systems meltdown

Tuesday, 16 Jun, 2017 0

British Airways’ bank holiday IT chaos will cost it an estimated £80 million, shareholders were told at a meeting yesterday.

The systems failure caused days of cancellations and delays and impacted around 75,000 passengers.

The airline blamed the problems on human error, saying an engineer had turned off the power supply and then failed to follow the correct procedures when switching it back on again.

Speaking at a meeting with investors in Madrid yesterday, Willie Walsh, chief executive of BA’s parent company IAG, said the IT failure was a ‘dreadful experience’.

An independent investigation has been launched to find out what happened and to make sure it doesn’t 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.