Heathrow chaos ahead of bank holiday as IT outage causes dozens of British Airways cancellations
British Airways passengers departing from Heathrow on Friday are facing possible delays to their flights after a “technical issue” resulted in dozens of cancellations on Thursday.
More than 50 British Airways flights departing from Heathrow were cancelled on Thursday as Brits prepared to jet off for the bank holiday weekend.
In a statement released just before 10pm on Thursday, the airline said it was “aware of a technical issue, which we have been working hard to fix”.
By 11:30pm, British Airways tweeted that its “systems are back up and running” but said there might still be “intermittent issues”
The airline said: “While the majority of our flights have continued to operate [on Thursday], we have had to cancel a number of Heathrow flights due to a technical issue.
“Affected customers have been contacted and offered options, including a refund or rebooking to an alternative flight with us or another carrier. We are extremely sorry to our customers for the inconvenience caused.”
The airline is urging passengers to check their flight status before going to the airport on Friday.
A spokesperson from Heathrow airport said the cancellations are not due to airport strikes.
Security guards at the airport launched a three-day strike on Thursday in a dispute over pay.
The spokesperson said: “British Airways is currently working to resolve a technical issue with a number of its systems. We have additional Heathrow colleagues on-hand in the terminals to provide passengers with any additional assistance required.”
One Twitter user, who was at the airport around 7pm, said: “Almost all BA flights from LHR T5 cancelled tonight. No info. About 4 people on BA desks trying to deal with the chaos. Come on BA you can do better than this. You are supposed to be the UK’s flagship.”
British Airways was also forced to cancel flights just before Christmas due to IT issues. The airlines most notorious IT issue occurred in 2017 when hundreds of flights from Heathrow and Gatwick airports were cancelled due to an IT failure.
