British Airways resumes flights from London after IT outage but many passengers still wait
British Airways
resumed some flights from Britain's two biggest airports on Sunday after a
global computer system failure created chaos, but hundreds of passengers were
still waiting for hours at London Heathrow.
BA
said it aimed to operate the majority of services from Heathrow and a near
normal schedule from Gatwick, the capital's second busiest airport. Heathrow,
however, said it expected further delays and cancellations of BA flights.
At Heathrow's
Terminal 5, where BA is the dominant carrier, hundreds of passengers were
waiting in line on Sunday and flight arrival boards showed cancelled flights.
Some passengers were
curled up under blankets on the floor or sleeping slumped on luggage trolleys.
Several passengers complained about a lack of information from BA representatives
at the airport. Others said their luggage had been lost.
"Many of our IT systems are back up today," BA Chairman and Chief Executive
Alex Cruz said in a video posted on Twitter.
"All my British Airways colleagues on the
ground and in the air are pulling out all the stops to get our operation back
up to normal as quickly as we possibly can, we're not there yet."
Cruz said BA, part
of Europe's largest airline group IAG, planned to fly all its long haul
services from Heathrow on Sunday, although there would be delays due to the
knock on impact from Saturday's disruption and some short haul flights would be
cancelled.
He also asked
passengers not to arrive at Heathrow too early, warning they would not be
admitted into Terminal 5 until 90 minutes before their flight's scheduled
departure time.
Gatwick and Heathrow
also told passengers not to travel to the airports unless they were rebooked on
other flights.
British Airways
cancelled all its flights from Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, and Gatwick
on Saturday after a power supply problem disrupted its flight operations
worldwide and also hit its call centres and website. Cruz said there was no
evidence of any cyber attack.
A spokeswoman for BA
could not immediately detail the exact number of flights cancelled on Saturday.
HAOS FOR PASSENGERS
Thousands
of passengers queued for hours in departure halls at the airports on a
particularly busy weekend. Monday is a public holiday and many children were
starting a one-week school holiday.
Cruz said those who
decided not to fly could rebook for dates until the end of November, or receive
a full refund.
While British
Airways could face a one-off financial hit from the cancellations, the risk to
its reputation among customers could have a more damaging longer-term effect.
It is already facing
declining customer ratings following unpopular decisions made as it faces
competition from low-cost airlines. These include starting to charge for food
on short haul flights last year to cut costs.
"There will be short term financial
repercussions of this outage in terms of lost revenue, compensation for
passengers and cost of alternative arrangements," said Kunal Kothari, UK All Cap equity analyst at Old
Mutual Global Investors, one of IAG's top-10 shareholders.
"I do not, however, expect the outage to
have lasting financial repercussions for the group."
Terminals at
Heathrow and Gatwick became jammed with angry passengers, with confused BA staff
unable to help as they had no access to their computers, according to
passengers interviewed by Reuters.
Some passengers
expressed frustration on Twitter over missing bags and long waits in telephone
queues to speak to BA staff. BA said it had introduced more flexible rebooking
policies for passengers affected.
While other airlines
have been hit by computer problems, the scale and length of BA's troubles were
unusual.
Delta Air Lines Inc
cancelled hundreds of flights and delayed many others last August after an
outage hit its computer systems. Last month, Germany's Lufthansa and Air France
suffered a global system outage which briefly prevented them from boarding
passengers.
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