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27 May 'worldwide' BA IT outage | practical assistance/advice [Clutter-free please]

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Old May 27, 2017, 8:25 am
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Last edit by: NWIFlyer
All IT systems are back up and running and BA are operating normal flight schedules.

PLEASE ASK ALL COMPENSATION RELATED QUESTIONS IN THE DEDICATED TOPIC: The 2017 BA compensation thread: Your guide to Regulation 261/2004. The full list of cancelled and delayed flights for Sunday is to be found here, though note that it is the arrival time that matters for delays.

Successful (or otherwise) reports for claims where the information would be of use to others would, however, be very welcome in this thread.

Monday flight cancellations for LHR listed here. Services to and from LGW, LCY and STN seem to be working more or less on time.. Telephone numbers for rebooking are in this post, note also the difference between what contact centres and airport staff can do, noted here.

Updated 29/05/2017 22:50 (UK time) Link to BA updates: https://www.britishairways.com/trave...VINF4more_news

Baggage
There are a significant number of bags at Heathrow which we will be reuniting with customers via couriers as soon as we can. This will be done free of charge. Please help us to get these to you as quickly as possible by ensuring we have your latest contact details by filing a delayed bag report.



If your journey was disrupted -
Because of the scale of the disruption, most passengers should expect to make their own arrangements to mitigate the disruption as BA will not have resources to assist all passengers. BA have a duty of care under EU Regulation 261/2004 and according to this letter handed out at Gatwick the following costs would usually be claimable from BA.
  • £25 for reasonable meal/refeshment expenses (per adult per day)
  • 2 reasonable phone calls per customer

If an overnight stay is required
  • £200 for a hotel room (for 2 people)
  • £50 Transport to/from the airport (round trip)

Although BA has suggested some guideline costs for duty of care, EU Regulation 261/2004 doesn't specify any monetary cap. By documenting (take a screen capture of a hotel comparison site for example) that there were no cheaper alternatives, it is possible that claims exceeding the guideline costs suggested by BA may be met. Expenses not covered by BA may be claimable from your travel insurance subject to possible policy excesses.

Duty of care is separate from fixed sum compensation (EUR 250 to 600 depending on the flight distance) for flight delays/cancellations, which may or may not be payable under EU Regulation 261/2004 depending on whether BA can show that the flight delay was caused by 'extraordinary circumstances' and that it took 'all reasonable measures' to avoid the resulting delay. Also, airlines do not usually entertain claims for consequential losses (for example, the cost of prepaid accomodation which you can't now use), so you would need to look to your travel insurance for these costs.

EU Regulation 261/2004 does not cover delayed/damaged/lost baggage. The Montreal Convention sets an upper limit for delayed/damaged/lost baggage compensation. For more information, visit the BA.com webpage on delayed/damaged/lost baggage.

You can read the forum thread for guidance on EU Regulation 261/2004 or check back on these forums later for more advice on claiming, but first of all look after yourself during this disruption.

Claiming expenses incurred during the disruption
https://disruptionclaim.britishairways.com/

Historic update as of 18:55 on Saturday

All BA flights from LHR and LGW are cancelled for the remainder of the day (Saturday 27th May). This is due to a major systems outage of most of BA's computer systems. The original cause of the outage was a power failure from which BA has found it difficult to recover.

Because Call Centre systems are also down, and their own web pages may be affected, BA is encouraging affected customer to seek updates via BA Twitter feed and Facebook page.

Alex Cruz has indicated that those passengers who no longer wish to fly with BA on their booking for today will be "fast tracked" for refunds. However, no mechanism for this has yet been communicated (7pm Saturday). Again affected customers are asked to follow the relevant Twitter and Facebook communication channels.

There are reportedly long delays leaving the airport with some customers claiming delays of many hours.
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27 May 'worldwide' BA IT outage | practical assistance/advice [Clutter-free please]

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Old May 27, 2017, 5:10 am
  #76  
 
Join Date: Aug 2015
Posts: 540
Originally Posted by Dr Dave

The only aircraft listed as boarding is the 8:45 to Athens. There are occasional other calls over the tannoy for boarding.

.
I'm sitting over by the first wing entrance and can't hear anything. It's like they only have some of the tannoy system on.
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:13 am
  #77  
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Originally Posted by Tiger_lily
Where's the failover to the secondary data centre?

I've just outsourced the infrastructure for my company and we have an RTO of 1hr max and we're a not for profit. And we do failover tests twice a year.

I'd expect tier 1 bank levels of failover and redundancy in BA's case. Clearly not.
Well, quite.
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:13 am
  #78  
 
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Originally Posted by ahmetdouas
Funnily enough we studied this in my Business Management course in Royal Holloway, the basic conclusion was that British companies are simply not efficiently run to deal with problems before they happen! At that conclusion, it was inevitable that the country would be run by foreigners who are better at that! (for example, Bentley being owned by Germans - VW Group)
I agree - it's curious how British companies and public organisations seem totally incapable of planning for failure events until they actually happen (like the recent NHS IT meltdown). Perhaps it's part of our cultural heritage!
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:16 am
  #79  
 
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Originally Posted by henkybaby
A lightning strike is the most ridiculous explanation I have ever heard. As many have said already, that is not how modern IT works.
If that is the case (lightning strike/weather), it would allow BA to get out of the EU 261 clause. I wouldn't be surprised if they did, can you imagine the number of claims stacking up already?
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:16 am
  #80  
 
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I

The Cathay F lounge is a haven, the checkin queues were the worst I've seen them. On the rare day I have a suitcase too!

I'm on the 1345 to Miami and the 1040 hasn't left yet! (It is 1215)

Looking forward to manual boarding of a 747. Oh well.
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:16 am
  #81  
 
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Even the "best" infrastructure can melt down when the human in the loop does silly things. Just see the >4h downtime of Amazon S3 (and all the dependencies to it).
IOW: even in the cloud it rains (tears)! :-)
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:17 am
  #82  
 
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Cue BA taking the "lock the door after the horse has bolted" approach and say that additional investments will be made to ensure that this failure does not happen in the future.

IT as a cost centre for most companies and does not earn them money. However, in situations like this, you reap what you saw.
Originally Posted by Fontana
If that is the case (lightning strike/weather), it would allow BA to get out of the EU 261 clause. I wouldn't be surprised if they did, can you imagine the number of claims stacking up already?
I disagree. There is a reasonable case for negligence for not building in sufficient resiliency/redundancy.
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:22 am
  #83  
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Was supposed to fly WAW-LHR-JFK today, connecting to AA at T3. Outage happened some time between check-in and scheduled boarding.

With BA 847 delayed indefinitely, I decided to offload myself for today and rebook for tomorrow. Of course this assumes reasonably back to normal tomorrow. Will be making a reservation on LOT WAW-JFK as a fallback just in case.

Have to say BA's contracted airport service firm did a great job. My bag was delivered to the belt within 20 minutes of me requesting to be offloaded.
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:23 am
  #84  
 
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Oxfordshire, UK
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Originally Posted by Mapman
The IT system in my garden shed is rather robust. UPSs, redundancy in backups, backups of backups, redundant fibre connections, dual aircon systems, etc...

Not rocket science. Perhaps I should bid when the next tender comes up...
Speaking from experience, the issue won't be your shed, bu the unfit-for-purpose and rushed RFP that doesnt ask for any of the services in your shed, but they expect you to bid on it anyway.
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:32 am
  #85  
 
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Obviously not confirmed but a plausible reason for the outages
Attached Images  
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:35 am
  #86  
 
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Originally Posted by doctoravios
I agree - it's curious how British companies and public organisations seem totally incapable of planning for failure events until they actually happen (like the recent NHS IT meltdown). Perhaps it's part of our cultural heritage!
For top IT jobs, we tend to choose beancounters over technical specialists and, from my 17 year experience, when problems like this occur, it boils down to something as fundamental as the people in charge never once having had to consider what might happen if a piece of their code didn't return the result they expected.
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:36 am
  #87  
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 8,771
Originally Posted by Fontana
If that is the case (lightning strike/weather), it would allow BA to get out of the EU 261 clause. I wouldn't be surprised if they did, can you imagine the number of claims stacking up already?
For info, the county courts have held that lightning strikes to aircraft are not extraordinary circumstances for the purposes of EU261. That position may be subject to debate further to the recent ECJ decision on bird strikes, however it absolutely isn't the case that an airline can simply plead "lightning strike" and get away with it. The measures taken to avoid/mitigate the effects are paramount.

Last edited by Ldnn1; May 27, 2017 at 5:57 am Reason: meant ECJ not Court of Appeal
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:38 am
  #88  
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Originally Posted by Jimmie76
I get that if I go to BA.com but the US site https://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public/en_us is working for me at the moment.
Try and change or make a booking... At least that is where it falls apart for me.
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:44 am
  #89  
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Originally Posted by henkybaby
Try and change or make a booking... At least that is where it falls apart for me.
Yeah I just tried to go into a booking I have and I got the white (404) screen of death.
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Old May 27, 2017, 5:47 am
  #90  
 
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From the Contact Centre, having called to discuss my options:

"We can't do anything. We have no systems".

He was very nice about it, mind you.
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