There is a fairly prominent story on this in today's Daily Telegraph, bringing together both issues from yesterday. Here is an extract.
British Airways: Reports of delays and cancellations at Heathrow as airline reports 'systems issue'
18 JULY 2018 • 8:55PMBritish Airways passengers reported long delays and cancellations on Wednesday night after the airline reported an issue with its computer systems.
Passengers said that planes operated by the airline were not taking off from Heathrow, amid reports on social media of delayed aircraft across Europe.
British Airways customers arriving at Heathrow Terminal Five were reportedly told that a computer system failure had halted all British Airways flights.
They were reportedly advised to book overnight accommodation or seek alternative travel arrangements. There were also reports that the airline online-check in service had failed. “We are experiencing disruption to our flights as a result of an issue with some of our IT systems,” British Airways tweeted earlier last night
It added: “We are working hard to urgently resolve the matter and are sorry for the disruption to some customers’ travel plans. A spokesperson for Heathrow, said: “We are aware that British Airways is currently experiencing an issue which is impacting their ability to provide boarding passes to some passengers. We will be working with the airline to support their efforts to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”
The IT system failure comes just over a year after a
computer meltdown saw the airline forced to cancel 726 flights over three days, leaving 75,000 passengers stranded and costing the company around £100m
The delays yesterday came after an earlier fire alert at Heathrow’s air traffic control tower briefly forced flight to be diverted to other airports. It "impacted operation of the airfield for a short while" on Wednesday afternoon, according to the airport.
Last May's IT failure, which also came at the start of a busy holiday period, sparked intense criticism of the company and its management, as well as frustration over the lack of information handed out to customers by BA staff. It was blamed by the company on an electrical technician employed by an outside supplier for shutting down an “uninterruptible power supply” located in the plant room of the firm's London data centre.
British Airways said in a statement: "As with a number of airlines we are experiencing some disruption at Heathrow a result of an issue with a supplier IT system.
"We are working with our supplier to resolve the matter and are sorry for the disruption to our customers’ travel plans."