London flight chaos as British Airways seeks to restore services

British Airways flights in and out of London’s Heathrow airport, the third busiest in the world, were disrupted for a second day as the carrier struggled to return to normal service after a massive computer failure paralyzed its operations, stranding thousands of travelers.

A total of 95 British Airways flights, or 10 percent of services, were canceled by midday yesterday while 210 flights, or 24 percent, were delayed, according to Flight Aware, a Houston-based airline tracking service. Flight Aware said 418 flights were scrapped at Heathrow airport and Gatwick, south of London, on Saturday and 568 were delayed.

The airline yesterday urged passengers without rebooked flights to stay home and check the carrier’s website for status updates.

British Airways had to scrap all Saturday afternoon and evening departures from Heathrow and Gatwick airports following what it called a “very severe disruption” worldwide. It ordered passengers to leave the terminals and urged other travelers to stay home.

The airline is aiming to operate the majority of its Heathrow departures on yesterday and “a near normal schedule” from Gatwick, although aircraft and crews are out of position and have to be relocated during the night, it said in a website posting Saturday. Portions of the system had been restored Saturday.

“We are extremely sorry for the huge inconvenience this is causing our customers, and we understand how frustrating this must be,” British Airways Chief Executive Officer Alex Cruz said in a video message filmed at the carrier’s operations center near Heathrow.

“We believe the root cause was a power supply issue, and we have no evidence of any cyber attack,” Cruz said in the message distributed on Saturday night.

The breakdown, which also affected call centers, prevented passengers from rebooking or from retrieving luggage that had already been loaded onto their planes.

Heathrow, in a tweet yesterday, said further delays and cancellations of BA flights are expected and urged travelers to check websites or BA’s Twitter feed before heading for the airport.

Travelers took to Twitter on Saturday in Europe to complain of flight postponements, long lines to check in, and waiting for long periods on the tarmac after boarding planes. Once services were canceled, passengers from grounded planes or at gates at Heathrow endured large crowds at passport control desks to re-enter the country.

British Airways staff told customers to find hotels on their own for reimbursement later by the airline. Payments will include 200 pounds (USD260) per night for lodging, 50 pounds round trip between the airport and the hotel, and as much as 25 pounds for refreshments, according to leaflets from the company.

“I would estimate, given the timing of the bank holiday weekend, that this has affected a hundred flights and a thousand passengers already,” said John Strickland, director of aviation at analysts JLS Consulting, “Considering the reimbursements for canceled flights and the costs of lodging stranded passengers, this will have an impact on revenue and the magnitude of the cost will depend on how long the outage lasts and how long it takes to resolve.”

Hotels surrounding the airports were reportedly charging as much as 1,000 pounds ($1,280) to 2,500 pounds for rooms for a night, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

The airline said it would seek to rebook customers “over the course off the rest of the weekend,” or offer full refunds if a passenger is unable to fly.

The disruption coincides with the start of the annual end-of-
May Bank Holiday weekend in the U.K., as well as the three-day Memorial Day weekend regarded as the unofficial start of summer in the U.S.

Last September, a computer network failure brought down British Airways’ check-in system, causing worldwide service delays, while earlier this week, London Gatwick airport reported problems with its baggage-sorting system. Bloomberg