BA flights hit by fresh round of IT problems

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

British Airways’ passengers were hit by widespread disruption on Monday after the airline suffered a fresh IT failure.

The carrier said its flights were suffering from delays and it was “working to resolve a technical issue with some of our systems”.

Passengers around the world reported major hold-ups as the problems swept through BA’s operations, including leaving some planes unable to take off because of issues communicating with the carrier’s base at London Heathrow.

Other customers complained of problems accessing the BA app, while the company’s website was also down.

The problems with BA’s website began at about 5pm London time, and were easing by 7.30pm, according to DownDetector.com, which collects third-party reports of online service disruptions. By 9.30pm BA said its systems were working again.

The incident is the latest high-profile IT failure for the airline, which also suffered from major computer problems in 2017, 2019 and 2022.

The most significant of these came in 2017 over a holiday weekend, when tens of thousands of passengers were left stranded in an incident that inflicted lasting damage on the airline’s brand.

Alex Cruz, the former boss of BA, told the Financial Times in 2021 that big airlines were still using outdated technology and needed to invest to improve their operations.

“If you look at the underlying systems that all big airlines . . . rely on, it is 20, 30, 40, 50-year-old technology. It is truly amazing to see,” he said.

BA’s management has since made it a priority to modernise its technical systems as part of a £7bn investment from its owner International Airlines Group.

But it has suffered other operational problems, including air traffic control disruptions, and cancellations and delays have risen sharply since the pandemic.

BA late on Monday said: “Our teams worked hard to resolve an issue we experienced for a short time earlier this evening. We’ve apologised to customers for delays to their flights and ensured they were able to reach their destinations as planned.”