BA to operate ‘near normal’ Gatwick and Heathrow service after IT crash chaos
BRITISH Airways has said it will aim to operate a “near normal schedule” from Gatwick airport and a “majority of services” from Heathrow today following a major IT crash.
BA hope to operate a 'near normal' service from Gatwick and Heathrow airports
Thousands of passengers were left grounded and swathes of flights cancelled out of the major south-eastern airports after a power supply issue caused a major systems failure.
Planes landing at Heathrow were unable to park because outbound aircraft could not leave gates, resulting in hundreds of passengers being forced to stay on planes in sweltering heat.
British Airways passengers angry after mass cancellations
In the chaos at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 BA staff were reduced to writing flight information on white boards as they were unable to access computer systems.
Customers affected by the meltdown are being refunded or rebooked onto new services.
Frustrated passengers were offered refunds or were re-booked
Thousands of passengers were left stranded
A BA spokesman said: “We are continuing to work hard to restore all of our IT systems and are aiming to operating a near normal schedule at Gatwick and the majority of services from Heathrow on Sunday.
"We are extremely sorry for the huge disruption caused to customers throughout Saturday and understand how frustrating their experiences will have been.
"We are refunding or rebooking customers who suffered cancellations on to new services as quickly as possible and have also introduced more flexible rebooking policies for anyone due to travel on Sunday and Monday who no longer wishes to fly to/ from Heathrow or Gatwick.
"We would advise customers travelling across the Bank Holiday weekend to continue checking the status of their flight on our website, www.ba.com before coming to the airport.”
Footage filmed at Terminal 5 showed queues of passengers struggling to discover when they might get off the ground.
There were chaotic scenes at Heathrow and Gatwick airports
Student Emily Wilson said: “We were told it would be three hours for collecting bags, that all compensation will have to be done online and that we are unable to re-book flights now because of the system being down.”
Reports that the computers had been crippled by hackers were denied.