British Airways cancels more than 175 flights as IT failure enters second day
British Airways has cancelled more than 175 flights as the fallout from an IT failure entered its second day, fuelling predictions of widespread travel disruption at the start of a bank holiday weekend forecast to be the busiest since before the pandemic.
As motorists hit the roads, encouraged by forecasts of sunny and warm weather at the start of the school half-term holidays, reports of clogged motorways were already emerging on Friday afternoon.
At Heathrow, thousands of British Airways passengers faced disappointment and disruption, as an IT problem that began on Thursday evening led to their flights being grounded.
The number of BA flights from Heathrow to be cancelled had risen from 50 on Friday morning to more than 170 by the afternoon, amid reports of long queues at Britain’s largest airport.
The majority of those affected were on short-haul routes popular for city breaks, including destinations such as Paris, Athens, Nice and Rome.
In a response to a customer on Friday afternoon, the British Airways Twitter account said the company’s IT problems had been resolved. However, its website was still advising passengers to check their flight status before heading to the airport, as the knock-on effect of the outage caused further disruption.
A spokesperson for the airline said: “While the vast majority of our flights continue to operate today, we have cancelled some of our short-haul flights from Heathrow due to the knock-on effect of a technical issue that we experienced yesterday.
“We’ve apologised to customers whose flights have been affected and offered them the option to rebook to an alternative flight with us or another carrier, or request a refund.”
The airline has tried to prioritise routes where there are few
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